Scientific Method
by DreadNot
Summary: “I have had three experiments this century. One was a complete failure despite a promise of success, one has not run its course, one is a qualified success I had been resigned to seeing eventually fail.” Alucard, Seras, and Walter assess war's aftermath.
1. Chapter 1

_AN: Advance warning, this is another one of my "__threesome pairing"__ fics, which means that for the price of admission, you can expect AxW, WxS, AxS, and AxWxS in varying forms. Thus, if you are a person for whom either het or slash is a no-no, it'__s time for you to hit the back button on your browser. For the rest of you adventurous/masochistic souls, this fic will be nine or ten chapters. _I will be updating very regularly. _This was written as a birthday gift for Oscar Rose. Sorry it__'__s taken so long to finish. _

* * *

"Do you remember your first kill, Walter?" 

"Of course I do. It's not something I can forget, nor likely ever will, no matter how old I may get."

Alucard's laugh filled the room where the two were sitting, watching over their companion while she lay unconscious. "That will likely be quite old. The Angel of Death doesn't die. _Can't_ die."

"I can die, Alucard," Walter demurred. "Even you can die, somehow." Only because he was prepared, and because he had known Alucard for so long, was Walter able to catch the flicker of emotion on the vampire's face. Even Walter, for all his long acquaintance with Alucard, would not venture to say what emotion it had been.

"However, you were asking about my first kill," Walter continued, as though he had not seen that naked flash. "What exactly did you wish to know?"

"Did you ever question why it was so easy for you?" Alucard's expression was a bit too self-satisfied for Walter's preference.

"No," he said slowly. "I was very young. I did what I had to do." He wanted to ask Alucard what he was getting at, but wanted to see where the vampire was going with his questioning.

Alucard glanced down into the open coffin where Seras lay.

"You and I spent more time together during World War II and for years thereafter than I have spent with my own child. Have you never wondered why?"

Walter shook his head and shrugged, "I never understood why you turned her to begin with. Your explanation about never giving up just wasn't quite enough to satisfy me. But I learned long ago the futility of questioning you when you choose not to answer a question in full."

He stood and walked across the room to look out the window. Looking outside at the darkness, what he saw instead was his own incongruously young face reflected back at him. He wasn't surprised to see this face. This young man was how Walter had always seen himself. Before Millennium's little changes, it had been the face of the old man that had always taken Walter by surprise when he looked at his reflection. He had always felt like this same young man.

With effort, Walter could make himself look like that old man again, but that always snapped back to this younger face. His body responded to his will, and when he wasn't concentrating, his body defaulted to how he saw himself unconsciously. Knowing this put a new spin on his perceptions of Alucard's varying physical appearance. He couldn't help smiling at the memory of the much less imposing version of Alucard he had known in the 1940s.

* * *

"Walter, I want you to meet Hellsing's most dangerous resource." Arthur Hellsing stood aside and Walter stared disbelievingly at the person Arthur had revealed. He looked up at Hellsing's leader, waiting for the man to laugh and explain that he was joking, that Alucard was actually in a room down the hall, bound in silver chains and sipping virgin blood through a straw. 

The person Arthur had described as being "Hellsing's most dangerous resource" was a child hardly older or larger than he was, and Walter could charitably be described as short and stringy. It wasn't until the other approached and held out a hand for a handshake that Walter noted the red gleam of his eyes and the tiny fangs when he asked, "You're the new butler?"

Alucard glanced up at Arthur, "He's a bit small, isn't he?"

Arthur laughed, "You're unliving proof that size and appearance are not important." Hellsing's leader shook his head, "Although your current choice of form is not how I expected you to greet our new butler."

Walter tried not to fidget while Alucard looked him over. He could almost feel the vampire's fingers rifling through his head, picking at various memories and looking them over before moving on. He felt as though the vampire had taken his full measure and approved when the fingers finally withdrew from his mind.

"He has potential," was all Alucard said to Arthur before turning away and walking out of the room through a wall.

* * *

Alucard rose and stood behind Walter, looking at their reflections in the mirror that the window had become. "I have had three experiments this century. One was a complete failure, despite a promise of success; one has not run its course; one is a qualified success I had been resigned to seeing eventually fail." 

"The failure was Integra. I came so close to molding her into the proper companion – bloodthirsty, intelligent, loyal, but independent minded – only to have her snatched away when we teetered at the brink of perfection together. If she had only taken my gift of immortality, she would have been my greatest triumph." Walter watched Alucard's face, but wasn't surprised when the other vampire kept tight rein on his expression.

"The experiment that I cannot yet judge is Seras. She has the potential to be great if she can let go of this useless hold on humanity she insists on keeping." The word "humanity" came out with a sneer. Alucard had even less truck with that now than ever before.

"You are the qualified success." Alucard met Walter's eyes in the mirror that the night had made of the window. "I had resigned myself to failing with your death." He shook his head, "For all that I molded you to be a companion who would be interesting for more than a human lifetime, you insisted on growing old, growing weak – staying human.

"You remain only a qualified success, as you did not choose vampirism yourself."

Walter was unsurprised to hear himself, Integra and Seras described in this manner. Alucard was not human, which was something he lulled people into forgetting. His motivations were not fathomable to those who were not as he, and there were none like him.

Even Walter had forgotten once or twice when he was younger, but as he grew older, he stopped letting that happen. He knew that Alucard was a creature with motivations he would never understand. Although, he supposed, he would now have the chance. He reminded himself that even in life, Vlad Dracula had been insane, with motivations the sane could not fathom. Certainly more than four hundred years of undeath had done nothing to gentle that.

"What characteristics were you working for in your experiments?"

Alucard laughed and drew closer to Walter. Walter's eyelids drooped for a moment when the vampire wrapped his arms around his waist and rubbed his nose across the line of his neck that was exposed above his collar.

"Ruthlessness." Alucard rubbed his hands across the other man's chest and nipped lightly at his neck. His tongue ran over the twin spots of blood that came to the surface before Walter's inhuman regeneration closed the punctures. "You took to ruthlessness so easily, Angel of Death."

Walter nodded almost involuntarily. He had taken to ruthlessness as though born to it. So easily, in fact, that he had never thought to question it.

"Sensuality. We are sensual, aren't we, Walter?" Alucard's hands dropped lower, stroking along Walter's stomach and stopping at the waistband of his trousers. "Do you remember that night…"

"…outside of Prague?" Walter finished for him as he relaxed against Alucard, leaning back and feeling the hard lines of the other vampire supporting him. "I remember."

"Loyalty." Alucard was speaking directly into his ear now. Walter could see the other vampire still watching their reflections. If he'd still been human, he would have shivered, or at least had goosebumps along his spine. As it was, he almost missed those little human thrills of reaction. "You were so loyal, Angel, that you would have died an old man for a promise Arthur Hellsing elicited from you when you were sixteen."

Walter's eyes closed entirely when Alucard's nose brushed over the shell of his ear while one of his hands dropped lower and rubbed against Walter's burgeoning erection for a fraction of a second before returning to begin to pull the tails of his shirt out of his trousers.

"Your loyalty is so great, so deeply ingrained that not even Millennium's technological wizardry could turn you against Integra when it really mattered." Alucard's voice turned to a low growl for a moment and Walter discovered that some of those little human thrills were not as gone as he had thought. He relished the feel of goosebumps marching up his back from the base of his spine.

When Walter opened his eyes, he wasn't surprised to see two different faces looking back at him from the reflective surface of the window. Gone were the tidy ponytail and distinctive monocle. Instead he saw a shaggy haired boy in his early teens. He'd forgotten how thin he'd been, a child of war years, but it was still Walter. He could still remember that feeling of complete faith in himself and in his companion he'd had when he was as young as he now looked.

His companion. Standing behind Walter, instead of the familiar figure of Alucard in his scarlet Victorian affectations, was a slight figure in white. Without turning away from their reflections, Walter reached behind himself and patted the fuzzy white hat he remembered with fond humor. He pulled it off of Alucard's head and dropped it on his own. Just as he remembered, it fell over his eyes.

"I have tried three different approaches. I was most hands-on with you." He pulled Walter tighter against his body and nipped at his earlobe. "I started young with you, even younger than with Integra. I made you what I wanted, in all ways," "except whether you would choose vampirism." He growled slightly, irritated. "I thought that the traits I encouraged in you would be enough to make it irresistible.

"But even if Arthur hadn't gotten that promise from you, you still wouldn't have taken the gift."

"Curse," Walter murmured. "Not a gift, a curse."

"This is not a curse, Angel. Can you not understand that now?"

Walter closed his eyes and let more of his body weight rest against Alucard. "Tell me about your approach with Integra."

Alucard let Walter change the subject. They had forever to have this conversation and Alucard already knew how it would go.

"Integra had already learned a certain kind of ruthlessness from Arthur before I was even released. I had little work to do there. I encouraged sensuality in her much more subtly than I did with you."

"Her cigars," Walter said, pushing the hat away from his eyes only to have it promptly fall down again. "I always knew you were the reason she began smoking."

"Yes, her cigars. Among other things. Whereas with you I took the initiative," Alucard's slid a hand under Walter's untucked shirt and rubbed across his abdomen, muscular, but hairless in this youthful form, "with Integra, I let her think that the few personal demands she made of me were her idea."

"Personal demands?" Walter reached behind himself to clasp Alucard's hips to pull the two tighter together. "Do I want to know what kinds of personal demands Integra made with you?"

Alucard chuckled in his ear, "No, Angel, you don't want to know yet." Alucard's hand moved up his chest, stroking sharp nails over the sensitive skin. "You still think of Integra as a daughter." His other hand tipped the hat away from Walter's eyes to let him see their reflections again. The boy looking back from the window hardly looked like he should be feeling fatherly about anyone.

"We both know that by the time Arthur died, he had already instilled unswerving loyalty to the Hellsing Organization and to the Crown in Integra. I had no work to do at all with her on those." Walter nodded; he did know that. Integra had not known the meaning of the world yield.

"And Seras?"

"Seras? She has been different." Walter gasped and stiffened against Alucard when the vampire drew sharp nails over his nipple and then began to circle it with his fingertips. "I have used no influence on her at all. She has made her choices entirely on her own.

"Many have been foolish. A few have been excellent. I think she's learned the lessons of ruthlessness and loyalty satisfactorily."

By then Walter didn't care whether the hat kept falling over his eyes, they had closed again anyway. "Ruthlessness and loyalty, but not sensuality."

"War only teaches a special few about sensuality," Alucard's free hand turned Walter's face up to him and he ran his tongue over the boy's lips before speaking again, "Not everyone can be like you."

Walter laughed and shook his head, "Thank God for that."

"We will have time to show Seras. I have been most hands-off with her. My control subject."

Seras made a small noise behind them. Walter stiffened and might have pulled away if Alucard's arm had not tightened across his chest. Instead, disheveled though he was, with his shirt untucked and Alucard's hat obscuring his vision, Alucard turned them both around so that Seras could see them. Walter was acutely aware that his trousers were a bit more constricting than usual. He could only hope that Seras wouldn't notice that detail amidst the others she'd have to take in.


	2. Chapter 2

What Seras was noticing was the presence of two people she didn't know. And that she was in an unfamiliar coffin. And that the two boys, both of whom she recognized in some way, were vampires. 

The last detail had her scrambling out of the coffin and trying to find the best place to have the most advantage against two vampires at once. These two weren't just a couple of Millennium foot soldiers.

Alucard laughed. With this form, it was higher pitched, lighter; it should have sounded more innocent, but the jaded nature of that laugh made it chilling instead. "We aren't your enemies."

Walter had been trying to return to the appearance of the man Seras had known before, but his teenage self exerted a fascination he found difficult to let go of. The form influenced the thoughts in some strange way and it was exhilarating to have that sense of immortal unstoppability that he'd had when he was a teenager. Before he'd learned that he really could die.

It also meant a state lacking shame to a large degree, since he was already on display with Alucard's arms wrapped around him. He turned around, rubbing his hip across the front of Alucard's trousers along the way and dropped the other vampire's hat back on his head.

He pulled out of Alucard's arms and took one of the chairs they had been sitting in to watch over Seras while she was unconscious. He was grateful to slouch down and cross his legs, hiding his erection.

So many sense memories. Walter would have killed for a cigarette right then even though he had quit smoking more than forty years ago.

Seras had put the coffin between herself and the boy, and was trying not to gape at him. She recognized his rather idiosyncratic costume. She knew no one else who wore a waistcoat and crisply starched white shirt with sleeve garters. The gloves, as well, made her think of Walter Dornez. This boy was the very image of a picture of Walter she had seen on the wall in Integral's office.

The other boy looked just like Walter's companion in the photograph. Which would mean he was…

"Alucard?"

Alucard bowed mockingly and changed forms to one he had worn in the 1950s. He looked older, taller, and more masculine than he had moments before, and also more familiar. The white suit and fuzzy hat were gone, instead he was wearing a somber grey suit and had his hair short and slicked back.

"Walter and I were just taking a trip down memory lane."

_Complete with souvenirs, _ thought Seras. How many people could have a moment of nostalgia and actually turn into the people they'd been at the time they were nostalgic for?

_Who cares? _ What really mattered was where were they? Why was she sleeping in someone else's coffin? She did _not_ want to know why Alucard and Walter had been acting like secondary school kids engaged in a bit of heavy petting. But she did want to know what Alucard had meant by hands-on versus hands off approaches. Which question to ask first?

Start at the bottom and work up. "Where are we and how did we get here?"

"We're at Sir Penwood's estate," Alucard answered, and followed Walter across the room to take a place standing behind the seated boy. He smiled down at him and ran his fingers lightly across the back of Walter's neck. Seras' eyes widened to watch the boy seamlessly become a man who wore a similar, yet different costume from the one she'd always seen Walter wearing. "Hellsing will require months of work to be useful, if we even bother."

Seras remembered the man in the black pinstriped shirt. She remembered what she had seen this Walter Dornez do on the battlefield and she covered her mouth in a mixture of shock and terror.

* * *

She'd first seen him from the air. 

In the midst of the sea of shadowy figures, she had seen a circle opening. It had started small around a single figure, black clad among the black forms, a pale face occasionally visible. The circle grew and Seras flew closer, curious to see the person or creature in the center of the empty space.

Then she realized that she was watching a single man in a deadly dance. He did look like he was dancing as he spun, feet moving nimbly among the pieces of bodies his art left strewn in the street, hands and arms following a rhythm of their own as he wove a glittering sphere around himself.

And then she had gotten close enough to recognize him.

Walter. But not Hellsing's Walter, _ Millennium's _Walter. He was young, he was a vampire, and he was cutting a swath through humans and vampires alike with hardly a pause in his step. She could not imagine how this had happened, but in the past hours, she had learned that there were humans who had weaseled their way into positions of great trust only to be Millennium turncoats.

Her lips skinned back from her teeth as she snarled her disgust with Walter and prepared to fly down to kill him. Alucard had stopped her. His voice came sharply into her mind, _ Do not try to attack Walter, Seras. He will destroy you, and if he did not, you would harm him before he can be dealt with._

Seras had thought that harming the traitor_ would _be dealing with him.

* * *

Walter was mildly surprised by the unintended change of form for the second time in just minutes, but not overly so. He knew that he was reacting to Alucard's changes in some manner, although he couldn't say with certainty whether Alucard was manipulating Walter's form intentionally or if it was Walter's own unconscious reaction to being with Alucard in such an intimate manner. They had left such affections behind many years before, when Walter had told Alucard for the last time that he would die a human and that he would brook no argument about the matter. 

He could read Seras' facial expression. She was remembering what she'd seen the Butler doing to the Vatican's fanatics and to Alucard's own army of enslaved souls. Walter tilted his head back to look up at Alucard. "You should tell her before she tries to find her Harkonnen and shoot me."

Not that she would hurt him. Seras' power had grown tremendously since the beginning of the battle for London, but Walter had changed as well. He wouldn't place any bets if they were actually determined to destroy each other, but Walter was certain that he could hold her off if he had to take a strictly defensive stand.

Alucard's smile broadened and he ran a finger along the line of neck that Walter exposed in that posture. "It is your story."

Seras watched the two men interact so intimately and felt acutely embarrassed. She had always thought that Alucard's affections, such as they were, were reserved for Integra, but these two acted like old lovers.

"We _are_ old lovers," Alucard said with a self-satisfied smile down at Walter. He didn't need to read Seras' expression when her thoughts were an open book to him. "From long before Integra was born."

Seras frowned, "Is this what you meant by hands-on?" It made sense, she guessed. Look at them. They looked like they were so comfortable – with each other and with what they were. If Alucard was hands-on with Walter, less so with Integra, and hands off with Seras, what did that say about her in her sire's eyes?

"Would you rather I was more hands-on with you the way I had been with Walter when he was young?" Alucard tugged on Walter's ponytail to make him expose the line of his neck still more. It was an almost sacrificial posture and Seras wouldn't have been shocked if Alucard had cut Walter's throat open and drunk the blood.

Perhaps she wasn't so wrong. Alucard drew a fingernail along the other man's neck, leaving a thin line of blood behind.

"I've tasted him." Her sire looked away from the scarlet trickle on Walter's neck. "Would you let her taste you, Angel?"

Walter shifted slightly, crossing his legs and folding his hands on his lap in a manner that he hoped hid the fact that he was only growing more aroused by Alucard's words and actions. "I would."

Alucard smiled approvingly. "Walter is rarely argumentative or defiant, Seras." He stroked the line of Walter's throat, across the adam's apple and up to his chin. "With me," he amended.

Seras watched in disbelief. This wasn't the self-contained Walter Dornez she knew. This was just like Alucard, but Walter? This was not the man who had stepped on Jan Valentine's fingers until the bones snapped and who ran so many aspects of Hellsing without breaking a sweat. This wasn't even the ruthless killer she'd seen in the killing fields of London.

"This is as much Walter as those other men you're thinking of, Seras. Are you only the vampire who ripped another vampire to shreds with her bare hands? Or only the girl who made a flat joke to Walter about 'silverware?' Or even the girl who was screaming and crying in her coffin when we flew to Brazil?"

Walter tipped his head down, pulling against Alucard's hold on his ponytail. "While you two were talking, that little scratch has healed and now my blood is drying on my skin and itching."

"Such a waste." Alucard leaned down and licked the drying trickle of blood off of Walter's skin. He let go of Walter's ponytail and walked across the room to Seras. "You should have tried it."

Walter laughed, "She still can."

Alucard followed Seras when she tried to turn away. "I can show you what I meant by hands-on."

"Don't do me any favors," the girl snapped and turned away from him again, walking to the window where she'd seen Alucard and Walter standing when she woke. She looked at her reflection and scowled to see Alucard following her again. She met his eyes in the mirror of the window and frowned.

"You're alive aren't you? That's a considerable favor." Behind Alucard, Seras could see Walter stand and take a few steps to get a clearer view of the two of them. He caught her eye and nodded before going completely still.

_Ask your questions, _ whispered through her mind and Seras stiffened. She hated when Alucard did that.

"Why should I? You already know what they are."

With an effort of will, Seras didn't pull away when Alucard brushed away the lock of hair that so often drooped over her right eye. He was standing closer to her than he had since Cheddar and part of her wanted to relax against him the way Walter had.

"But Walter does not already know." Alucard trailed his fingers through her hair and down her neck to rest his hand on her shoulder. "Ask your questions."

There were so many! She just didn't know where to start. The more she saw Alucard and Walter, the more questions she had.

Of the many questions she had, many of them very practical, the one that popped out of her mouth was, "How can you two act like nothing happened? The world pretty much ended out there! And you," she spun around and pointed past Alucard at Walter, "were helping them end it!" She glared up at Alucard, "And you are cuddling up to him like he didn't betray us."

Instead of becoming angry at her impertinence as Seras mostly expected, Alucard laughed and chucked her indulgently under the chin. "This is why you didn't need much hands-on work. You've had this in you the whole time. It just took a true war to bring it out. That's all it was – a war; not the end of the world, although it always feels that way when you're in the middle of it."

"Unless you're Alucard," commented Walter dryly.

"Stop it! Both of you." Seras balled her fists and glared at Alucard and past him, at Walter. "Answer my question: how can you two act like nothing happened?"

"Because this isn't our first war, or even second or third," or fourth or fifth or sixth, in Alucard's case. "And we won. We do the fighting and killing for those who can't, and in return, they clean up afterwards."

"And Walter? How is he part of 'we' when he's one of Millennium's lackeys?" The way the two of them had dodged this question made her nervous.

"I am not one of Millennium's lackeys." For the first time, Walter sounded something other than languidly amused. Seras liked this tone of irritation better; it fit the moment much more than his placid good humor.

"This is your story, Angel." Alucard stood aside and Walter stepped closer. Seras shrank back against the window for a moment before squaring her shoulders and glaring defiantly at him.

"Tsh, Seras, I'm not going to hurt you. If I were, I would have done it while you were unconscious and helpless." Seras blinked at his casual mention of harming her while she was helpless.

Walter took her arm and led her back toward the coffin and the chairs next to it. "Sit. Please. We'll both sit down like civilized beings and I'll explain why you can trust me not to do any further harm for Millennium."


	3. Chapter 3

  
Alucard joined them, lounging on the closed lid of the coffin.

Walter smiled briefly at Alucard as he sat down, but the story wasn't easy to tell. He'd tried to avoid the matter altogether, but, as Alucard had pointed out, it was his story.

"My memory of the battle is incomplete at best." He tugged absently on his ponytail and grimaced slightly. "I was captured soon after Sir Penwood's death."

The former vampire hunter, now a vampire himself, looked around the room where they sat, thinking about the man whose home they occupied. Shelby Penwood had seemed ineffectual; even _he_ had thought of himself as being ineffectual, but he had always delivered when either Arthur or Integral needed something important, and he had been brave right up to his last moment.

Walter chided himself for trying to delay the inevitable and turned his thoughts back to the tale he had to tell. "I faced an enemy from my past whom I'd been unable to defeat when I was that arrogant young man you saw a few minutes ago." His expression was introspective as he related the story of what had happened.

"They took me to a room that was their idea of a surgery. It was…" he shook his head. "It doesn't matter. It's not important." Walter's voice was tense, clipped. "There, they did two things to me. First, they opened up my skull and implanted a chip in my brain. Then," he ran his tongue over one fang, "I was turned."

Walter pulled on his ponytail again, uncomfortable with the memories. "The Doctor liked to talk while he worked." His voice changed and took on a mocking, exaggerated German accent, "'Ve must implant ze chip first zo your body vill heal around it ven ve make you a wampire. Zen you vill nefer be able to remoof it.'" He grimaced as though the words had left a foul taste in his mouth, then shook his head as though clearing the memories.

"I don't need to tell you that as a vampire, I recovered from invasive brain surgery in minutes." His smile was chilly. "Recovered and was put into service immediately, protecting the Major from soldiers in Vatican helicopters."

Walter shook his head again and his smile thawed a little, "Apparently it's so hard to find a good butler that it's worth waiting fifty-five years for the right one.

"The chip governed my behavior quite strictly, but was hastily programmed. Every brain and mind are different, after all. And in that haste lay the seeds of my redemption. I followed the orders that the implant in my brain made me follow. Outside I was perfect, or so I heard them comment repeatedly." Inside he'd been anything but perfect as he fought with everything he had in himself to break loose.

"When the Major sent me to capture Integra, I swore to myself that I would find a way to be killed before I would harm my true master."

* * *

Dropping out of the zeppelin was a feat hardly worth noticing to Millennium's vampires. Part of Walter remembered being a mere boy and jumping out of an airplane with Alucard's precious Last Domain and falling, giddy, out of the sky and into Millennium's lap. That had been the first time Hans Günsche had shown Walter that the Angel of Death wasn't the most dangerous thing around.

Once in the middle of the melee, Walter had fought his way through the masses of Alucard's undead and the Vatican's human fodder toward the silent center of the destruction – the growing forest of the impaled.

He was aware of Seras when she flew close, but kept his focus on the creatures on the ground. She wasn't in his orders and she wasn't close enough to be an immediate threat. He was able to influence his actions enough to keep from attacking her.

His goal was to attract Alucard's attention before Walter could reach Integra. He did it by killing as many of Alucard's slaves as he could. He knew that Alucard would not miss the deaths, and that Alucard would not permit anyone, not even Walter, to harm Integra.

His relief when the vampire appeared amidst the dead was almost unspeakable. Here was the implement of his destruction and salvation.

He felt Alucard taking his measure and could have wept with relief when he heard the voice in his mind, _ Quite a mess you've gotten yourself into, Angel._

Alucard would keep him from being Hellsing's Judas.

* * *

Seras had relaxed slightly to hear that Walter had not willingly betrayed Hellsing, but his story raised more questions. "Did he take the chip out of your brain?" She looked at Alucard. Brain surgery wasn't something she'd expect of her master, but maybe he'd just ghosted his hand into Walter's head and pulled the chip out.

"I could not do that," Alucard admitted. "The chip had extended tendrils into every part of his brain. Removing the chip would have left Walter useless."

"Then what did you do? Why should I trust Walter now if he still has Millennium's chip in his head?" Seras was now anything but reassured.

Alucard slid off of the coffin and took a place standing next to Walter with his hand in the man's hair again. "Tell her the rest."

"I intended to. That was hardly a complete explanation." Walter gave Alucard a more genuine smile than had touched his face since he began his narrative. "The rest is not so bad. The worst was the Doctor's surgery."

* * *

Alucard looked Hellsing's fallen angel over. After the initial surprise of seeing Walter as a vampire, he was angry for his old companion. Walter had long denied the gift of immortality and Alucard had grudgingly respected his choice. That Millennium had usurped his prerogative with the man was a violation of Alucard's territory as much as their invasion of London had been.

Walter's orders forced him forward. Alucard stood between him and Integra and he had to continue to obey the commands of the chip that had hijacked his control.

The two had fought. It wasn't as one-sided as anyone who had watched Alucard defeat Alexander Anderson would have thought. Walter had been one of the world's top killers when he was human; the enhancements to speed and strength that came with vampirism would have made Walter_ the_ top killer if Alucard had not already occupied that spot.

Much of what passed between them was as blur of action to observers, flashes of red, white, and black, highlighted by the constant glint of silver. If merely cutting Alucard to pieces had been enough, Walter would have won, but little details like anatomy didn't matter to the vampire who had been Dracula.

The battle ended with Walter inescapably bound in shadows. _ Tsk. Angel. I thought you knew better than to let strange Nazis play in your head._

Walter had continued struggling because the implant required it, but he had turned his mind away from struggling with the parasite in his brain and silently responded to Alucard's mental whisper, _ Now is not the time for jokes. You have to kill me._

Kill you? You're finally a vampire and you want me to kill you? Alucard's tone was mocking and Walter's response was angry.

_Unless you can get this piece of silicon out of my head, I will be forced to keep trying to capture Integra to bring to the Fat Man. Kill me._

Alucard had always thought that biting Walter would be a triumphant moment. As he drained the blood from the vampire who had been a companion for decades, Alucard found another way to glean a moment of triumph from the man's second death in less than a day's time.

Above them, Big Ben's bells rang out, the familiar tones coming with a disharmonious clangor, instead of the world-famous melodic chimes. Walter's last thought was that it was a fitting funeral dirge - for himself or for England, he wasn't certain.

* * *

"You're telling me that you're dead?"

"Twice over." He rested against Alucard's hip and smiled tiredly, "Remarkable, isn't it?"

Seras leaned forward and asked what seemed like the obvious question to her, "Then why are you here looking like a perfectly healthy vampire?"

Walter passed that one on. "That's more your question to answer, Alucard."

"I couldn't get the chip out of his head, so I decided to give him a new head." Alucard answered. He let that hang long enough to be annoying before elaborating. "Walter's body is part of my own. His soul inhabits this portion and his will gives him form, but he exists as an individual because I allow it."

Seras stared at the two in horror. Walter was one of Alucard's soul slaves?

_No, he is not a slave. I have enough of those. I wanted a companion. _ His smile was sphinx-like. _Immortality gets dull without interesting companions. He must feed. He must rest. He is as real a person as you are. _

"Are you sure he didn't do anything to change you?" The girl looked suspiciously at Alucard. "You act different." She frowned when they both laughed. "What?"

Walter answered her question with a question, "When did you ever see me with someone I was close to?"

"Sir Integra–"

"You never saw me act close with her. I stayed very professional with her from the time she was a teenager. She had to learn to stand on her own." Walter shook his head, "I did what I had to do. Integra was the daughter I never had, but I kept my distance for her own good.

"You've never seen me in a private situation with someone I was intimate with. I was close with Alucard when I was young, clearly, with what I've just described to you, you can see how we'd be intimate now."

"Are we going to be intimate now, Angel?" Alucard murmured to Walter and tangled his fingers in the other man's ponytail.

Walter exhaled a laugh and leaned his head back against Alucard's hand. "Not right this moment, no. I think Seras has more questions for us."

"I _know_ she has more questions for us."

Seras nodded, "Yes, I do." _Like what do you mean by private situation? I'm right here. You two aren't in private, stop hanging on each other already. _ She kept that to herself and instead asked, "Where was I when this was going on?"

Walter passed that question on to Alucard, looking up at him and raising a questioning eyebrow.

"You were chasing the kitty up a tree, as I recall." 


	4. Chapter 4

  
_Chasing the kitty up a tree? _

Seras frowned at her sire. She hated when Alucard insisted on being cryptic. It was annoying as hell, actually. She felt she'd been through enough to have earned a few more straight answers. Walter had cleared up his part of the battle, but Seras realized that there were glaring gaps in her own memories of what had happened.

Alucard said, "You remember that Integra is dead." It was a statement, not a question.

Seras nodded, her throat tightening. She did know that Integra was dead, but she didn't know how she knew that or how Integra had died. It had just been there in her mind, an irrefutable fact: Integra was gone.

"What happened to Integra and why don't I remember what happened to her or to me? What happened to Pip? And why don't I remember finding out about Integra's death, but I know she's dead?" Now that Seras was thinking about the gap, it bothered her quite a lot. Why hadn't she questioned it before? What didn't she know?

"There is much you don't know, but Walter and I are willing to answer your questions tonight." Alucard said it as though he were granting her a concession and that there was no guarantee she'd get any answers after the night ended.

"Then start with what happened to Integra, and then tell me why I don't remember anything past seeing you defeat Paladin Anderson." That had been a fight to remember. Seras wasn't precisely glad she hadn't forgotten it, but at the same time, the clash between Section XIII's regenerator and his suicidal compatriots, and Alucard and his undead hordes, had been a piece of history she didn't regret having witnessed.

"Walter wasn't the only vampire the Major sent to retrieve Integra."

Finally, the two lovebirds seemed to have sobered, their moods becoming more what Seras thought they should have been from the beginning. She didn't care how many wars they'd been through, or how inhuman all three of them were, they had all lost something in this war, and it felt wrong to her to ignore that.

Seras thought of the things she had lost, that London had lost. Those things should be remembered with respect.

Alucard's gaze hardened as those thoughts flitted through Seras' mind. "Seras thinks she knows how we feel about the war, isn't that right, Seras?"

Walter sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, "If I may remind you, she is a very young woman and is at an age where she is old enough to have formed many opinions, but not old enough to have the experience to validate them."

Seras opened her mouth to protest and closed it again with a snap. She was sitting in front of two men who, although they looked young, were much older than she. It wouldn't do her any good to argue that somewhat insulting point.

Alucard continued to stare at Seras, but after a moment his hand, which had stilled when he challenged her, began to play through Walter's hair again.

"I will continue. Walter was not the only vampire that the Major sent."

* * *

Seras and Integral had been standing together in the small clearing at the center of the impaled when Schrödinger had appeared. Integral was watching Alucard with a small smile of satisfaction that Seras thought was Integral's version of a victory cry.

It had happened so quickly that only by reacting on purest instinct had Seras been able to act at all.

The catboy had appeared behind Integra and wrapped his arms around her waist in an instant. Seras lashed out at him with a speed that was impossible for any human and most vampires and caught a bare grip on his arm at the instant he disappeared with Integra in his arms.

It hadn't been his intent, but Schrödinger found himself delivering two Hellsing females to the Major instead of one.

Integra hung, almost limp in the small vampire's arms; Seras fell to her knees, fighting the urge to retch. They had been somewhere. Just for a moment, but what a wrackingly long moment it had been.

"Warrant Officer, what is this? I told you to bring me one Hellsing woman, not two." Max was sitting in a chair directly in front of them looking at Seras with amused disdain. "I didn't want this one until later. Take her away. Do what you must to keep her away." He waved a hand dismissively and turned his attention to Integra. "Ah, Miss Hellsing, how good of you to join us."

This time Schrödinger grasped Seras' arm and they disappeared again.

* * *

"How do you know this?" asked Seras. "You were busy with Walter for part of it. Were you there later?"

"If you didn't interrupt, you would know sooner."

Walter shook his head and stood up. "Please, take the seat, Alucard." He circled around the chairs to stand behind Seras. When she twisted around to see what he was doing, he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her back to face Alucard. "Would we have come this far just to harm you now and in this fashion?" he asked chidingly.

Seras considered his question and with reluctance conceded, "No." She was surprised, though, when his thumbs began to rub circles on her shoulders where he was holding her. She twisted away from his hands to scowl up at him. "What are you doing?"

"I am giving you something that you need. I would sit with you while you hear the rest of the story, but I assume that you would be unwilling to accept that sort of intimacy from me at this time," Walter responded mildly. He knew the rest of the story, and it wasn't going to be easy for Seras to hear.

She had intended to tell Walter that he was delusional if he thought she needed any intimacy from him at any time; then she heard the message behind Walter's words. Her eyes widened and she glanced back at Alucard, who had been watching their exchange with interest. "Is it really that bad?" she asked him.

He shrugged and smiled, slouching down in the chair and crossing his legs. "That depends. To me? No, it's not that bad. I've seen and done worse and laughed while doing it. To you? With your delusions of humanity? It is probably that bad."

Walter had already returned to rubbing his shoulders and he felt her shiver under his fingers. "Just remind yourself that you have already gotten through it," he advised.

Seras glanced up at Walter. She guessed if anyone could say something like that, Walter had a depth of experience that few could rival. She did as he advised, and used it as a mantra when Alucard continued with his narration.

* * *

InBetween was a place known to few. Schrödinger was a creature of that place, that plane – not by birth, but it was part of him nonetheless. Few could visit there – a few through history, a few gods, most of them long forgotten; a few wizards, fakirs, or holy men; the occasional creature that fate or intent had given an affinity for that place. To go there without that affinity was to risk one's health, sanity, life, and even soul.

InBetween was everywhere and nowhere, in those spaces between everything else. Most living beings would find themselves being slowly distributed into those in between spaces to help fill them and to return the realm to the perfect vacancy it was meant to be.

Warrant Officer Felix Schrödinger could live InBetween as long as he wanted. He was everywhere and nowhere just as much as that interstitial plane was. He was an anomaly – unique – despite Doc's many attempts to replicate the odd circumstances of Schrödinger's rebirth.

Regardless, he was the ultimate reconnaissance officer. He could go anywhere he knew existed because he was already there.

This time he was going someplace he'd always wanted to see before they burned it down.

Seras opened her eyes and looked around. She couldn't understand what she was seeing. The room was lit by an orange light, which seemed to rise from below the mesh covered openings. Something loomed overhead, but with everything else going on she couldn't make sense of the shapes. She tried to rise up off of the floor and found herself one wrong swallow away from emptying her stomach right then and there. The thought of wasting Pip's blood kept her in control, but barely.

_Pip? Where are you? _Her thoughts were momentarily frantic until she felt the already familiar touch in her mind. __

I'm here. I feel like I just got turned inside out, but I'm here. His thoughts were weaker than she'd experienced since they had killed Zorin Blitz together.

"What happened to me?"

"You're not strong enough to handle InBetween yet. Especially not twice close together." Two small feet appeared in front of her face and Seras looked up and blinked dully at the strange little boy standing in front of her. Where did she remember him from? Her mind was blurry, she could barely think straight; she dropped her head back toward the floor and tried not to heave.

"What's InBetween? Where are we? Where's Integra?"

"The Major wanted to see your boss, I always wanted to see Big Ben, and InBetween is what it is. You ask a lot of questions." Schrödinger crouched down in front of Seras and craned his neck to look her in the face. "Do you want to see London one last time?"

Without waiting for Seras to answer, he bounced upright again and pulled her up off the floor with an unexpectedly strong grip. Seras found that she had a bit less effort keeping her gorge down. "InBetween's hard on people," he said conversationally as he practically dragged her to the mesh–covered openings that looked down on the Thames and on London.

Seras knew where she was now, and when she looked behind her, this time she recognized the shrouded forms above them as the distinctive bells of Big Ben, their openings pointed up, ready to be released to chime the distinctive tones heard not just through London, but broadcast around the world by the BBC every hour on the hour.

Below them, London was hell on earth. More than a third of the city was actively on fire, and more fires spread while she watched. She could see the seething mass that was Alucard's army of captured souls and watch them open around, and then converge on, small pockets of enemies, both human and vampire.

"You know, this clock kept telling correct time during the entirety of the Blitz?" Schrödinger asked her. He looked at Seras with a bright smile and bounced on the balls of his feet. "Not this time. No! We're taking the whole thing down." The last was said in a delighted singsong.

He grabbed Seras' hand and spun her around in a circle and began to sing, "London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady. What shall we do with Hellsing's girl, Hellsing's girl, Hellsing's girl? What shall we do with Hellsing's girl, my fair lady?"

Schrödinger's pace picked up and Seras stumbled as he pulled her faster and sang, "Let her watch her city burn, city burn, city burn. Let her watch her city burn, my fair lady." He let her go on the last word and watched her careen across the belfry to land against the wall.

Seras fell to her hand and knees, retching up blood. She hadn't recovered from InBetween, whatever that was, and the sudden game of crack the whip had been the last straw to leave her feeling as though she'd just made the mistake of trying to eat a large meal of human food. She silently promised that after this night, she'd never do that to herself again.

* * *

Seras found herself leaning into Walter's fingers as he continued to rub at knots of tension in her shoulders. She had gone without simple contact for so long, and for all that she was a vampire, she still felt that basic human need for touch. Although, considering the way Walter and Alucard had been hanging on each other, maybe it wasn't so basic or so human.

She was filled with sorrow for what had been lost in the war, confused by the strange changes in both Walter and Alucard, and frightened of what the rest of the story was going to reveal.

Walter leaned down and murmured, "You've already gone through it. You know how the story ends – with us, here."

Seras looked up at Walter gratefully. He was right. No matter how bad Alucard's story was going to get, she did know the ending, didn't she? She reached up and squeezed his hand over the fingerless gloves he wore while he continued to work at her rigid muscles.

"What's this InBetween? I still don't understand it. Is it a place?" She frowned and tried to bring all of her questions together. "What did it do to me and to Integra?"

Alucard sneered slightly. "InBetween is what Schrödinger called it. It's a childish name from a childish creature."

"Then what do you call it?" Seras asked impatiently.

"I don't call it anything," he answered with a dismissive wave of his hand. "There are spaces between everything. Human physicists understand that idea on an intellectual level; a true nosferatu can use those spaces to pass through solid objects and to travel through space in no time."  
_  
"Schrödinger_ was a true nosferatu?"

"The little freak was something else. He wasn't even really a vampire. He was a freak lab accident with happy results for Millennium, never duplicated."

"Fine." Seras wanted to be annoyed, but Walter seemed to keep soothing the tension out of her and she didn't really want him to stop. "Just tell me why it made me so sick and what it did to Integra. We were only there for a blink."

"Those spaces between matter cause problems for creatures that aren't properly prepared. When you are 'InBetween,' you are faced with two large and conflicting problems – the universe wants something in those spaces and those spaces want to be empty. When you go through, you leave pieces of yourself behind…" Alucard grimaced in annoyance, "This would be simpler if you would just eat a physicist."

"Alucard…" Walter was smiling slightly and shook his head subtly at the other vampire. "Would you rather I took this question?"

"No. I can finish. Imagine if you lose a few molecules here and there from your body? That doesn't sound too bad, right? But you're losing a few molecules every moment from the instant you go through until you return to the physical plane. That's why your body reacted the way it did, but it's worse for unprepared humans. You, at least, can regenerate. You lose more than just molecules from your body while you are there. You lose particles of your mind, your memory, your soul."

When Walter's fingers moved to the bare flesh of her nape, Seras closed her eyes without thinking. Somehow she'd expected his fingers to feel cold, but the firm press of digits that were skilled in dealing death was warm and soothing. With her eyes closed, she missed the look that Alucard and Walter exchanged.

Walter nodded to Alucard, and the vampire resumed his story – Seras' story. The images his words wove played out on the screen of her closed eyelids.

* * *

Seras heard him coming and used the wall to lever herself into a standing position.

"We've been waiting so long for this fun." Schrödinger spun her around and pushed her back against the wall.

Seras waited for the world to stop spinning. "This isn't fun. Are you insane?" She struck out and knocked the catboy away from her and pushed away from the wall to follow him. Her lips skinned away from her teeth and she started to snarl as she pursued him.

She lashed out to hit him again, but he simply wasn't there.

"Sanity is determined by the majority." Small hands grabbed her hair and the shoulder above her shadow wing and Seras was whirled in another dizzying circle before being thrown against the wire mesh that enclosed the openings in the belfry.

He was on her again while she clung to the gaps in the wires. The little bastard was taking advantage of how easily dizzied she still was. He forced her face against the mesh and hissed at her, "Look down there. Look! It's Hell! The sane don't rule in Hell."

His grip was suddenly gone and Seras spun, fighting the nausea the movement inspired and searched the chamber for her tormentor. __

He lets you get close when he thinks you're too sick to act.

Seras blinked. Pip had been quiet during most of Schrödinger's games and she'd been too busy to think about him. __

I'm here. I've been watching. He's smart, but we can be smarter. She could hear the grin and it made her smile faintly, too.

"Up here."

Seras looked up to see the catboy perched on the upturned lip of one of the four bells. Seras didn't know which one was actually "Big Ben" and didn't care. This little Nazi monster was defiling one of Britain's symbols. One that the Nazis had failed to touch during all of their bombing of London during WWII.

Seras snarled and launched herself off the floor at the grinning vampire. She watched him disappear when she was sure he'd be in her grasp and she ended up clutching the lip of the bell to keep from tumbling into it.

Movement caught her eye and she saw Schrödinger now balanced on the lip of one of the other three bells. "Isn't this wonderful? We'll be the last people to see this place like this."

"Wonderful?" Seras' eyes searched the belfry for anything she could use to her advantage. "You're balmy!" Her eyes lit on the stays in the mouths of each bell. They were all that held the bells upright until they were chimed.

Pip whispered a suggestion and she nodded before stepping off of the bell into the open air in the center of the four bells. Seras hovered there momentarily before spinning in mid-air, her shadow wing spreading out to knock loose the four stays that held the bells in their almost vertical positions. The four bells, released to gravity's hold, dropped with ponderous swings and the belfry was filled with the mind-shattering volume of Big Ben's signature tones ringing together in a manner they had not rung in the tower's more than one hundred year history.

On the field of battle, thousands of eyes – living and undead alike – turned upward. For a fraction of a second, the only sound was the unharmonious clangor from Big Ben, then the clash resumed, with those combatants who were fractionally more alert taking advantage of their opponents' distraction to land killing blows across the field.

As the cacophony of the bells faded away, a new pair of eyes looked up at the clock tower, but Alucard's were focused on the zeppelin that floated above them. "Integral." Shadows enfolded the vampire. When they dissipated, Walter stood alone among the dead still staring up at Big Ben. He shook himself and turned away from the tower to seek out an old acquaintance.

* * *

"It's _my_ fault that Big Ben rang wrong, when it rang the proper time even while the Germans bombed London?"

"It was clever," Walter reassured her. He looked at Alucard and frowned slightly.

"Yes, as he says, it was a clever move," Alucard admitted, looking at Walter. _Better? Don't expect this coddling to become a habit. _

Walter's nod in response went unseen by Seras, although she saw the glance Alucard gave the other man. When she looked up at Walter, he was smiling down at her, not looking at Alucard. She shivered when he stopped rubbing her neck and instead drew a fingernail up the exposed line of her throat. She was reminded of watching Walter and Alucard in a similar pose and almost flinched away remembering how Alucard had cut Walter and casually offered the other man's blood to her to drink.

"Your story isn't over, Seras," he reminded her, pointing a long finger at Alucard before returning to rubbing her neck.

* * *

The sound of the bells had not harmed Schrödinger. He teleported out before Seras had even finished her desperate maneuver, and waited on the ground until the sound of the bells faded away. When the catboy teleported back to the belfry, he snickered to see Seras huddled on the floor with her one arm clutched over her head. It must have been hell up there with vampiric hearing.

He was not expecting her arm to shoot out and grab him by the leg when he came to mock her. He was not expecting the girl to lift her blood-streaked face in a snarl while she pulled him off of his feet and scrambled on top of him.

Seras Victoria looked positively animalistic as she bared her teeth in a snarl no natural creature could duplicate. For an instant, Schrödinger thought he might know how Rip Van Winkle had felt in her last moments.

Except Schrödinger had an escape route that Rip had not.

Seras sank her teeth into Schrödinger's throat in the belfry of the Clock Tower of Westminster Palace, but when she pulled her face away, sending an arc of blood flying away from her face and the prone body of her opponent, she was everywhere and nowhere.  



	5. Chapter 5

  
"Your story and Integra's will intersect again."

Alucard stood and Walter dropped his hands from Seras' neck with one last gentle stroke across her nape. The two men exchanged places; Walter once again took the chair sitting across from Seras and Alucard stood behind her.

Seras watched the two men with clear perplexity. This little dance of theirs was confusing her when she was already more than confused enough.

"Why do you two keep doing that?" Neither man answered her question.

Alucard brushed his fingers across the back of her neck as Walter had done, but dropped his hands to the back of her seat afterward. Seras found herself unaccountably disappointed by that. She hadn't realized how starved for touch she was until Walter had reminded her.

She backed up on that thought and looked at the two men and their behavior in a different light, glancing over her shoulder at Alucard and then back at Walter. When was the last time either of them had felt a friendly touch?

Walter smiled at her and nodded slightly. His smile broadened when Seras jumped at the feel of Alucard's fingers on the back of her neck again. This time he didn't stop with a light stroke across her skin, but began to smooth at the knots of tension Walter hadn't worked out of her neck.

Seras had to suppress a gasp. Walter had been skillful, but Alucard… Walter chuckled and relaxed back in the chair.

"You'll never think of a massage the same way again after receiving one from someone who can read your thoughts," he said. "That's why I went first. Alucard is a tough act to follow." Seras missed the brief leer Alucard gave him, but she saw Walter's eyes almost twinkle in response to something.

"You two planned this?" She sat bolt upright, but Alucard's fingers pushed that tension out of her body just as easily as he'd been loosening the knots in her neck.

"In a manner of speaking," Walter answered comfortably. "We did discuss how best to explain the events of the battle to you."

"What does this have to do with explaining the battle to me?" As hard as she tried to be indignant, Seras found she just couldn't put much force behind it.

Alucard's fingers stilled on her neck. "If we left you to sit alone here in your chair, would you be happier?"

Seras opened her mouth to say yes, she'd be much happier if the two of them would stop touching her and just sit down and tell her the rest of the story, then closed her mouth with a snap. No, she honestly wouldn't feel better. She'd felt very alone for what felt like a very long time, and she'd be lying to herself if she tried to say that she didn't like having someone touch her again.

Apparently that was sufficient response for Alucard. His fingers traced the tension in her neck perfectly, leaving Seras incapable of argument. She relaxed once more and her eyes slid closed.

Alucard resumed the recitation. "While you played with the catboy, Integra was in Millennium's hands. She was much the worse for wear for her trip through that in between space. Remember, she could not regenerate the damage done by leaving random molecules of herself behind the way you could. Compared to Integra, you got off lightly."

* * *

"Ah, Miss Hellsing, how good of you to join us."

Integra struggled to push herself up off the floor where Schrödinger had dropped her. Every part of her body ached and a red haze blurred her vision. She didn't know it, but her eyes were an almost solid red from blood from burst capillaries. Bruises bloomed over her body where she had been wounded from the inside by her moments InBetween.

"I would have Butler bring you something refreshing, but my servant is fulfilling his more important mission." Major Montana Max waved casually down at the battlefield where Walter and Alucard were moving through the opening steps of their engagement. The damage both were causing opened a circle that widened around them, creating something of an arena for the two combatants. Integra was still gasping for breath on the floor and missed the scene the Major was pointing out.

"A pity. He made excellent coffee."

Max snapped his fingers and a tall, gaunt man in a bloodstained lab coat and an absurd costume that left his midriff bare stepped forward. "Yes, my Führer?"

"Doc, Miss Hellsing needs your attention. She is unwell." The pudgy man beamed down at Integra where she had managed to push herself up on all fours. She was so weakened by the effort that she merely knelt there, gasping and trying to ignore the taste of her own blood in her mouth. "I'm certain that you can help her with her weakness."

Doc nodded curtly and crossed the small observation platform to pick up Integra. He cursed and stepped back when she sat up on her knees and drew her sword. He watched the kneeling woman carefully, observing the way her upper body swayed despite her best efforts to remain still, and accurately judged that her reflexes were impaired.

Integra could only register Doc's motion as a blur. One moment she was sitting up, with great effort holding her sword ready, and the next moment, her hand was screaming in pain and her sword had gone clattering off of the observation platform to land in front of a surprised soldier at his instrument console.

"It would be a matter of moments to splint your fingers," Doc muttered to her as he pulled her up off of the floor and held her virtually dangling while she tried to force her legs to hold her up. "But that will be unnecessary. You will heal quickly enough soon."

* * *

Even Alucard's fingers couldn't get Seras to relax listening to this part of the story. While this was happening to Integra, Seras had been up in Big Ben with Schrödinger. She should have been by Integra's side. She should have gotten away from the catboy and flown back to the zeppelin to rescue Integra.

_All three of us carry some blame for Integra's death._ Seras jumped and looked up at Alucard when his voice sounded in her head. She wanted to shout at him for doing that when he was right next to her, touching her even, but what he had said had been almost consoling.

_Who are you and what have you done with my Master? _ crossed her mind, but she tried to keep the thought to herself.

"If it puts your mind at ease at all, I am still a monster."

Walter snorted derisively at Alucard's comment. "Even monsters have down time and if ever you were going to be sated, now would be the time," he said.

"I am sated for _bloodshed, _ for now." Alucard's tone carried an unspoken "but…"

"But there are other things for which you are not sated," Walter finished for him.

"It is ever the way of our kind – always a hunger for something – for blood, for violence, for sex, even for touch. Don't you think so, Seras?" Alucard's fingers moved up her neck and brushed along the lower edge of her jaw.

Seras had closed her eyes again and had been unconsciously leaning into Alucard's fingers, savoring the sensations that tingled in her skin where his fingertips brushed; when he asked his question, at first she failed to register it as directed at her. She startled slightly and opened her eyes. "It does seem like it's always some new thing."

"Live long enough and few things are new any longer. It's just the same endless cycles of wants."

Seras wanted to look up and see Alucard's face after that statement, but his stroking digits along her jawline kept her facing forward, looking toward Walter, who was regarding both her and Alucard with unfeigned interest. She tried a small smile. She was alive, Walter was alive after a fashion, and Alucard was still Alucard. She hadn't lost everything; in fact, she'd probably lost less than most people in and around London.

* * *

Integra gritted her teeth and through sheer force of will and stubbornness made herself stand. It seemed clear from her demeanor that she would be dead and damned before she'd cry out from the pain in her teleportation-traumatized body and broken fingers. Doc continued to keep a grip on her arms, but an observer would not guess just how much of her weight Millennium's mad scientist was taking with his hold.

"Tch, the human condition," the Major said with a false expression of concern. "See how it weakens you? With your servant's power within your grasp, why did you choose to maintain this feeble condition?"

The contempt in the look Integra gave the Major was searing. Her response matched the look, "I am human because I will not sell out humankind to protect it." She coughed and tried not to gag on the blood in her mouth.

Max leaned forward in his chair and looked disappointed, "That is the only reason you have? How dull and selfish." He looked up at Doc. "Take her down to see the First. I think it's time for the final act in our drama to begin."

Doc's fingers clamped down harder in Integra's arms at the order. He looked ready to question his commander, but Max cut him off, "She has waited long enough, Doktor. Let her wake this time. Let her use this one to fuel her rise. I have faith in your work to keep her from destroying us all."

* * *

Walter's face had gone still while Alucard continued the story. It ached for him to know that he had failed Integra so profoundly – that he was the reason Alucard did not get to her in time to save her. If Alucard had not been distracted fighting him, he would have known sooner about Integra's capture.

Seras watched Walter's face close down while Alucard told Integra's part of the story. His smile had faded away quickly and she was surprised to realize that he was looking a good deal older. The change this time had come subtly, but the face she was looking at now had more lines and a higher forehead and much more closely resembled that of the man she'd known since joining Hellsing.

Impulsively, she reached across the gap between the two chairs and caught one of Walter's hands between hers. Both Seras and Walter stiffened when she made the contact. With Alucard's hands still on the skin of her neck and Walter's hand held in hers, it was like closing a circuit and opening up an unfamiliar line of communication. Seras pulled away from both men and stood up abruptly.

"What was that?" she asked, backing away. She glared at them when Walter glanced at Alucard and neither answered her.

"Tell me! What just happened?"

Alucard gave Walter a shuttered glance before asking, "Why are you asking us? You were there. You felt it. Don't try to lie to us or to yourself."

"I felt…" Seras floundered for a description.

"What we feel," finished Walter simply.

When Seras looked more closely at him, she could see that he was as shaken as she was. Somehow that made her feel better.

"Yes, I guess so," she said while she rubbed her hands along her arms to try to dispel the chill she felt. "I felt…" Again she searched for words. She didn't understand the things she had felt from Walter and Alucard. There had been no words, just emotions, jumbled and complicated just like hers often were, but alien and invasive as well. It had been difficult to find her own feelings under the wave of their emotions that had hit her when she took Walter's hand.

From Walter had come a tumult of feelings, with grief being one of the stronger emotions, but far from the only one. Alucard's had been more a maelstrom than a simple tumult; its pervasive flavor was of hunger. Seras could only imagine that it was a taste of the hunger Alucard had mentioned before – the one that was never satisfied, ever demanding. She'd felt vampiric hunger before, but Alucard's was different, deeper, _hungrier, _ if that was possible.

One thing was certain, neither man was thinking only of the story being recounted, and picking those emotions out of the welter she'd just experienced made her look at both men with something akin to panic. Seras was frightened to realize that both Alucard and Walter held feelings for her that were… well… intimate. She was more frightened knowing that both of them had to know the same of her now.

It was much easier to keep a sense of decency when everyone could pretend they didn't know that Person A was lusting after Person B. Now Seras found herself in a situation where not only did she know how Walter and Alucard felt toward each other, which would have been enough to make her blush on its own, she also knew how the two of them felt toward her. And how was she going to make any good arguments when both Alucard and Walter would know she wasn't purely snow white in her feelings about them?

"You did that on purpose," she accused, glaring at Alucard in an attempt to cover up her confusion and fear.

"I did not," Alucard answered calmly. "I was unaware that would happen."

"What was it? Why did that happen? It didn't happen when I was just sitting in the chair letting one of you rub my neck."

"My educated guess is that it is related to what happened later in our story." Alucard pointed to the empty chair in front of him. "The empathy seemed to be related to all three of us being in contact. There's no reason why you can't sit down and let me continue."

The story? The massage? Seras supposed he meant both, and hesitated; if she sat down and let Alucard touch her again, was she giving him permission to act more intimately? And Walter? Her hand rose and clutched at her shirt over her heart, which was racing. Funny, she'd always assumed vampires wouldn't have to worry about silly things like that. After she became a vampire, she'd realized that a creature that _existed_ for blood would have to have a way for blood to make its way around the body.

And she was letting her mind wander away from the real issue because it made her terribly uncomfortable. Seras forced her attention back to the crux of the matter at hand – how was she going to behave with these two now that one of the cats was out of the bag? 


	6. Chapter 6

Glancing back and forth from Alucard to Walter, Seras tried to decide what to do. She cast around trying to determine if somebody needed to be blamed, but she'd also felt both men's surprise. She may have tried to blame Alucard, but she _knew_ that he hadn't expected that the three of them would feel each other's emotions like that when they were all touching. 

But having a first hand idea of their feelings didn't do anything to make Seras feel more at ease. Knowing that they knew how _she_ felt, made her feel very exposed and nervous.

But she had a better feel for the two men and she knew she'd be a little insulted and a little hurt if one of them drew away from her the way she was drawing away from them.

But… she thought it would be too easy to lose herself under the tide of Walter and Alucard's emotions and hungers.

_Don't try to lie to us or to yourself. _

But…

The buts were making her head swim. She had too many objections swarming through her head that she found she didn't actually _want_ to listen to, even though she thought they were probably sensible objections.

"I want to know the rest of the story." She didn't particularly want to hear it, but she had to know.

Both Alucard and Walter regarded her silently, and Seras tried not to squirm under the weight of their eyes. Finally she sighed and sat down again. "But one of you keeps his hands to himself at all times."

Walter leaned away from Seras and folded his hands across his lap. "I'll be as perfect a gentleman as you require." He was still shaken from the experience and wasn't in any more of a hurry to see it repeated than Seras was.

Alucard betrayed no concern for repetition of the incident when he put his hands on her neck again, taking up working out the new knots of tension from her muscles. "Don't be too perfect. That would be dull." He waited for Seras to relax slightly before picking up the narrative again.

* * *

The Major turned away from Integra and her captor to watch the battle going on below. Integra's vision was still too clouded to be able to determine what was happening and she remained ignorant of the identities of the combatants. 

"I won't let your final sacrifice goes unwitnessed, Miss Hellsing." Max waved dismissively over his shoulder. "I will be along to watch after Butler and Alucard finish their play."

Integra's shoulders straightened at the slight both to her status as a knight and her status as his enemy. Being dismissed so casually was an insult above anything else he could have done. Which was as he intended. She threw him a glance over her shoulder as Doc dragged her off the bridge that promised that the Major would pay for everything with this last tidbit thrown in on top as interest.

"Butler and Alucard?" Integra managed to choke out as the man in the bloodstained lab coat propelled, and eventually carried her through the hallways of the zeppelin when her legs gave out. She had stayed relatively unharmed through the thick of the battle down below, but all it took was a fraction of a second to reduce her to this. Doc had no respect for the woman's choice to remain weak.

He didn't answer and conveyed her deep into the hold of the zeppelin, where the hallway became narrower, the light remained unchanged in intensity, while somehow leaving more corners in shadow, and the air had an unpleasant weight to it. No human would voluntarily walk into this. The zeppelin's cargo made every instinct in living creatures that approached it scream to flee and even made the vampires' skin crawl with foreboding.

Finally they reached the door to the First's chamber. Two soldiers stood in front of the door; two more turned in their patrol of the side hallways to watch Doc's approach with the woman in his arms.

With a barked order, the door was opened and Millennium's mad scientist carried Integra Hellsing in to meet Millennium's progenitrix and answer to Alucard.

* * *

"'Answer to Alucard?'" Seras twisted around and looked at Alucard before standing and backing away from him. "Integra met Millennium's version of _you? _

"How do you know this? No more games. No more 'I'll tell you later in the story.' Just tell me now." Seras gave him a hard stare and crossed her arms under her breasts, hugging herself. The room darkened and shadows seemed to seep from the corners while Alucard met Seras' eyes expressionlessly.

The silence stretched and was broken when Seras realized that Walter was standing directly behind her, although she had not heard him move. "I doubt it will ruin the flow of your story," Walter said dryly after she noticed him, "to give her that _specific_ piece of information. Otherwise she'll likely be too busy gnawing at the question to hear what you're trying to tell her."

Seras wished at that moment to understand what was passing between Walter and Alucard that she couldn't hear. Whatever it was, she saw Alucard nod his head fractionally at the other man before answering Seras.

"I ate the doctor. Consumed his soul and everything he knew and witnessed." He sat down in the chair and crossed his legs, looking neither proud nor ashamed of that admission. It was just as significant to him as having read the information in the newspaper.

By this time, Walter's hands on her shoulders came less as a surprise than a relief. Hearing Alucard describe what he did so baldly was appalling, but even more so, it reminded her that she still didn't know what had happened to Pip. There were so many unanswered questions and it seemed as though the more Alucard talked, the more questions she had.

She leaned back against Walter and felt his fingers on her shoulders tighten slightly in reaction before he put his arms around her and his hands over hers in a firm embrace. "Are you two ready to continue?" he prompted. When Seras nodded, he escorted her to his recently vacated seat and murmured with a smile that was a bare twitch of his lips, "Shall we continue our game of musical chairs? Please. Do sit."

* * *

She didn't look all that imposing if one looked at a photograph of her – something that couldn't convey the aura of power and menace that spread away from her like a fog. Approaching where the mummy was mounted on the wall, though, Integra began shivering, although she remained otherwise stoic. 

Doc's steady footsteps faltered and slowed until he stopped at a painted line that arced across the floor. Mentally completing the arc, one could see that the First was the center of a circle the arc was part of.

"Ilse," Doc snapped.

A woman in Millennium uniform rose from behind a row of equipment with a voltage tester in hand. "There was some difficulty with some of the camera equipment, Doktor. I was just getting it back on line." She took in Integra's dirty and bloodied form in his arms with a look of patented scientific disinterest. "This is the one?"

"Yes, and the Major wants us to start waking her now," a nod toward the figure on the wall.

The blonde woman Doc had called Ilse approached her superior and looked Integra over. "What happened to her? I thought she was supposed to come in unharmed?"

"Schrödinger," Doc said as explanation and the woman nodded, needing no further answer.

She held out her arms and the man transferred Integra into her arms and hurried to a desk situated outside the arc and typed a series of commands into a waiting computer terminal. "Get started. The Major will be joining us soon."

Ilse laid Integra on a gurney and strapped her down before pushing the gurney over the line in the floor and positioning Integra directly in front of the shrouded form of the First.

From outside the zeppelin, penetrating even to the depths of its interior where the First's chamber was located and protected, came the sound of Big Ben's bells ringing cacophonously.

The chimes were fading away when Integra went stiff against the restraints and stifled a cry of surprised pain.

"So sorry, Miss Hellsing. Past experiments tell us that this part is quite painful." Doc sounded anything but sorry and he was humming to himself as he typed notes and commands into the computer in front of him. "It will all be over soon."

* * *

"Who is the First?" Seras asked. "_What_ is the First?" 

"She is what the name implies – the first vampire – the source of most vampires. She is mother to Millennium's trash."

Walter interrupted Alucard, clearing his throat and giving the other vampire a less than happy look.

Alucard tossed his head and made a exasperated noise. "She was only your mother as a vampire for a matter of hours. You are mine, not hers."

"Why aren't you hers?" Seras asked the question, even though she was nervous about the answer. She knew so little about Alucard's actual origins. Stoker's novel was a work of fiction, even if based on fact, and Seras didn't know how Alucard had actually gone from Vlad Dracula, ruler of Wallachia, to Dracula, the vampire, and scourge of London during a brief period at the turn of the century.

"I am not hers because no vampire sired me." Alucard leaned forward in his seat, eyes glittering. "I chose you because you don't know how to give up. _I _didn't give up even when Death himself stood before me. I would not die."

Behind her, Seras heard Walter murmur, "And you, my father, there on the sad height/ Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. / Do not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

"Perhaps." Alucard smiled slightly. "I did rage against my light dying, and God responded with his ironic sense of humor, taking light and giving me the dark." He sat back and flicked his fingers dismissively. "I have no sire save perhaps my Last Domain, but I do not owe my existence to Lilith, nor do either of you."

"Her name is Lilith?"

"Yes. From her rose the legend of the defiant Lilith, Adam's first wife, and a succubus who stole men's souls and seed and killed babies and children." He shrugged, "There's usually a germ of truth in legend. Perhaps she preferred the taste of children. They are delicious, I would agree."

Seras stiffened and Walter put a quieting hand on her shoulder. "When was the last time you fed from a child, Alucard?" he asked.

"It has been longer even than my servitude to Hellsing," the vampire replied and Seras relaxed, glancing up at Walter in thanks. Alucard's look for Seras was not conciliatory. "Children are delicious, but preying on the young is neither a challenge, nor good husbandry." He was beginning to look bored or impatient or both. "Are we finished with the discussion of my eating preferences?"

Abashed, Seras nodded. "Please finish the story."

"Lilith was the first vampire as far as either human or vampire history records. Where I have had centuries and the help of the Hellsing Organization to attain the level of power I possess, Lilith has had millennia. Her power is staggering."

Seras' eyes widened to hear Alucard describe another creature's abilities in such terms. She'd seen what her master had unleashed on London – at least part of it, since she could not remember the end of the battle – that the vampire capable of Alucard's feats of devastation would describe Lilith's power as "staggering" spoke loudly of her abilities.

"That sort of power does come with a price. Just as I required blood to wake me from my hibernation when Integra found me after her father's death…"

Walter leaned down and whispered to Seras, "I will tell you that story another time."

"Are you finished?" Alucard arched a brow at Walter and waited for the man's nod. "Just as I required blood to wake me, Lilith must feed to wake. However, just as her power is exponentially greater than mine, the power required to rouse her is exponentially greater. The tiniest taste of a soul is enough to rouse me from torpor; Lilith, she requires the entire soul to wake."

* * *

A/N: The poem Walter quotes is by Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night." 


	7. Chapter 7

Alucard's statement that Lilith required an entire soul to wake made Seras' stomach lurch; at the same time, Walter's fingers tightened on her shoulder. When she looked up, she saw that the lines on his face had deepened still more; the man standing behind her was the picture of the Walter Dornez she had known since joining Hellsing. This was clearly affecting Walter more strongly than his placid facial expression suggested. 

Impulsively, she stood. "Sit down, Walter." When he tried to demur, she grabbed one of his hands and pulled on him until he came around the chair and sat.

Turning to Alucard, she asked, "Can I have your suit jacket?"

Rather than question her, he leaned forward and slipped the requested piece of clothing off, handing it to Seras and waiting to see what she intended to do with it.

Seras wrapped the jacket around her waist and sat on the floor at Walter's feet, leaning back against his legs. With a skirt as short as hers, there was no way she was going to take a position like that without something to help protect her modesty.

Walter met Alucard's eyes and cocked an eyebrow. This was progress, indeed. _I doubt that she would appreciate knowing that she just wrapped a piece of you around her waist._

_It's nothing more than shadow, less than a full piece of myself. Otherwise I would not have given her the jacket. I don't want an unexpected repetition of what happened earlier when we three touched._

_I'm certain that Seras would appreciate that thought as much as I do. _Walter reached out and smoothed down her hair. When Seras sighed and leaned her head back against his knees, he brushed the stray lock of hair away from where it had fallen across her right eye again and nodded toward Alucard that they were ready for the story to continue.

* * *

Alucard had allowed himself to be distracted. Integra had been behind protected lines, Seras had been with her, she should have been safe enough. The fight with Walter had been engrossing and he'd allowed himself to draw the engagement out for the pleasure of seeing his old companion go all out against him. 

Walter had no holy relic to pull out in a last ditch attempt to destroy him as Paladin Anderson had. After fighting through a swath of leveled London buildings, their fight came to its inevitable conclusion with Alucard's victory, both over Walter in their personal battle, and over Millennium in their attempt to own and control _his_ Angel of Death.

Big Ben's bells tolled out as Alucard took Walter's Millennium-ruled life and body. The last tones were ringing as Alucard created Walter's new body and pushed his soul into it. The vaguely man-shaped blob of shadow mass resolved itself into Walter's younger self by the time the bells quieted.

No longer needing to focus on Walter's re-creation, Alucard became aware that Seras and Integra were gone. He sensed Seras briefly in the top of Big Ben, but she winked out of existence. He knew she wasn't dead, but she was beyond his reach.

Integra, however, was in the zeppelin and not beyond his reach. His shadows were bearing him up to the Nazi dreadnought when the first bolt of pain struck him through the bond and seals with Integra.

While passing through the hull of the ship, Alucard had a flash of contact with Seras, but he was back in the material plane too quickly to get a fix on her location. Though he was concerned for his fledgling, his Master was his higher priority. He followed his bond with Integra into the depths of the ship, but was blocked by the walls and doors of the room where he sensed her.

He made short work of the four guards and took the key to the First's chamber off of one of their bodies. He felt the power behind the door stirring and bared his teeth in anticipation of the confrontation, although, for the first time since the Hellsing family had begun its experiments in "perfecting" him, Alucard did not feel completely confident of his inevitable victory.

The door opened easily with the key and Alucard felt Lilith's power thrusting through the open portal. Integra's presence was a thin thread in the roar of the First's presence, but it was there. He fell to shadows that swept across the room toward Integra only to stop short at the line painted on the floor.

Ilse looked up from watching Integra when Alucard's presence had disrupted Lilith's dominance of her chamber. She placed her body between Integra's and the outside of the circle; she had been part of this project almost from the beginning and wasn't going to see it derailed so close to completion.

Doc – all males in fact – was repelled by Lilith's aura. When she slept, it was merely unpleasant to men, but as she roused, her aura became physically impossible for a male to penetrate unless she willed it. Alucard was encountering that problem. Doc had had nearly sixty years in which to learn from partial awakenings just how far the impenetrability extended – thus the line on the floor for his own convenience and reference in preparation for her final and full awakening.

Females, on the other hand, could thrive in Lilith's presence once they learned to overcome the feeling of dread that the First broadcast indiscriminately. Both Rip Van Winkle and Zorin Blitz had spent time helping the Doktor's research. Prolonged exposure to Lilith's presence had changed the women, giving Rip and Zorin their special abilities. Ilse had not come through the years working with Lilith unchanged, either, but was not put into combat because Doc still needed a female to do the close work with their ultimate weapon and Ilse's gift from Lilith did not lend itself well to war.

Doc had frozen at his computer terminal when Alucard invaded the First's sanctum. He didn't fear that Alucard could stop the awakening. It was far too late for that, but the warped genius wanted to survive to see Lilith fully conscious. He'd never been able to risk allowing her full consciousness before this day and he didn't want to die without having seen her full power.

Motionlessness might work for rabbits faced with a fox in a meadow, but Doc was faced with a far higher order of predator. When Alucard was certain he could not penetrate the circle on his own, he turned on the nearest target. Millennium's mad scientist had time for a single choked cry of agony before the shadows closed over him and dissipated, leaving no trace of him behind.

Alucard absorbed the information from the scientist's soul and howled.

The echoes were dying away when Seras appeared, bloodstained, but whole, if one counted the shadow limb, which Alucard of course did.

* * *

"How did I do that?" Seras sat up straighter while smoothing Alucard's jacket over her knees. She didn't like the way the story was going, but what was there to do about it? As Walter had pointed out, she had already gotten through whatever Alucard was going to tell her, but somehow that didn't console her when she knew that Integra hadn't gotten through it, and she wasn't sure that Pip had, either. 

"You did what I've been trying to get you to do since I turned you – you embraced your vampiric nature and used it."

Walter nudged Seras with a knee until she scooted forward. With his legs on either side of her body, he slid off of the chair onto the floor and put his arms around her. The disturbing nature of the things she kept learning from the story left her unwilling to make him stop, even if she stiffened and drew away out of deeply ingrained habit. Was it so wrong to want someone to hold her while she listened to the story of the deaths of people she cared about?

Slowly, she relaxed back against Walter and braced herself for the resumption of the tale.

* * *

The blood that flew when Seras pulled away from Schrödinger had no place to land and dissipated into the eternal nothing the pair occupied. Schrödinger mewled and tried to get away from her, counting on leaving her there to dissolve into nothingness, but that would only work if he could just escape her grip. 

Resisting the urge to snarl from the pain that was wracking her with every moment InBetween, Seras wrapped her legs around the creature that masqueraded as a boy and pulled his body to meet hers. While she drank from him and felt his soul fighting to stay in his body, to stay free of captivity to her, Seras could feel herself becoming less not just physically, but in other, less tangible ways.

With Schrödinger's blood, Seras was healing her body as quickly as the spaces of InBetween claimed pieces of her to fill its gaps, but his blood was doing nothing to heal the losses she felt in her mind, and on a deeper level that she guessed might be her soul, or spirit, or anima; whatever it was that made her an individual. The pain of that loss was far greater than any pain to her body. Seras found herself sobbing while she continued to drink and fight Schrödinger for possession of his soul. Learning what he knew was her only chance to find her way out of this space before it was too late.

When the agony suddenly abated, Seras shivered, her whole body relaxing from its stiff posture. She hadn't realized just how bad it had been until it was released. A feeling of warmth and comfort enveloped her; the scent of Pip invaded her nostrils and made her look around, even as she continued her struggle with Schrödinger.

_Finish him, quickly, chère, I can't protect you for long. _ Pip's voice was taut with suppressed pain.

_What do you mean? What are you doing? _ Seras felt panic welling and did everything she could to push it down. She could panic later when she knew she wasn't going to dissolve into a bit of mortar holding the bricks of the universe together.

_You don't think I died for you just to let you die now, do you? Now finish him! _ Was his voice weaker? The panic surged back to the fore.

Seras sobbed and focused her attention on the creature in her arms. This thing held the key to getting her and Pip back to London.

Despite whatever Pip was doing, the pain was creeping back, nibbling at her concentration and taking tiny nips out of her thoughts – nips that became nibbles; nibbles that became bites; bites that began to tear at her mind and soul.

Finally, with a last snarling hiss, Schrödinger let go of his body and Seras drew his soul into herself, straining everything he knew through the filter of her own soul until she knew him as well or better than he knew himself. Using that knowledge, she began to pull herself together, literally, drawing the lost pieces of herself back from where InBetween had stolen them away.

Pieces of herself…

Pip had been silent since ordering her to finish Schrödinger.

Seras cast around for the familiar feel of the mercenary's soul, already knowing, with a sick feeling in her stomach, that he was gone. Seras brought her knees up to her chest and hugged them to herself, weeping while Schrödinger's corpse dissolved into the crevices between everything.

It took Seras a few minutes to cry and to regain her mental footing after losing a soul she treasured and gaining one from a creature she hated. She hated Schrödinger all the more so because he had cost her Pip. There would be no heaven or hell for her love, only nothingness.

When she thought she'd managed to put Schrödinger away inside herself and found enough of her mind to be able to think and fight, Seras willed herself to the First's chamber on the Hindenberg II, knowing, because Schrödinger knew, what the Major had planned for Integra.

Seras' first impression was from Lilith. She could not look away from the bound and bandaged figure that hung on the wall like a cocoon, ripe with promise that whatever emerged would definitely bite. She was repulsed, yet attracted.

When Seras could drag her eyes away from Lilith's figure, her next impression was that Integra was strapped down in front of the thing on the wall and was arched up against the straps with an expression of strained agony on her face while a female vampire held her down and warily watched something out of Seras' immediate field of vision.

Alucard's voice spun her around to face her sire, "Lilith is consuming her soul."

* * *

"That's it?" Seras was stiff in Walter's arms again. "After everything he sacrificed, after the fight with that _bitch_ with the tattoos, after giving his life for me, Pip dies InBetween because of me?" 

"Would you have had him sacrifice his life for you for nothing?" Walter asked, still holding her despite her closed and withdrawn body language.

"No! I don't want him to have sacrificed his life at all!" Seras twisted to look at Walter. "Don't you understand?"

He pushed the rebellious lock of hair away from her face again and looked at her with the eyes of a man who had been a warrior since childhood and watched many people die over the years. "I do."


	8. Chapter 8

"There are worse things than nothingness."

Seras and Walter held eye contact despite Alucard's somewhat provocative statement. Walter nodded in agreement, though. "I would have preferred not to exist at all, than to do what Millennium required of me. I was certain that not only was I doomed, I was damned when I told Alucard to kill me. Better hell than betrayal, better nothingness than hell."

"But you didn't go to hell or to nothingness. You're here, just as real as ever, and Pip doesn't exist at all." Seras' eyes filled with tears.

I am getting tired of the coddling and handholding. This is not how a No Life King should behave. And you, Walter, I would not have thought that you'd be encouraging her in these displays.

_She is young. She does not have even my experiences of war. She cannot approach your depth of experience, or of callousness. One would hope that she never does. _ Walter understood Alucard's point, though. Just days ago, he would not have considered holding the girl while she moped about the many necessary evils of war. He wasn't a sentimental man; a life spent hunting vampires and serving Hellsing had erased most traces of sentimentality in his personality. He felt more sympathy for her than he would have thought himself capable of.

Walter looked to Alucard and wondered if the uncharacteristic patience that Alucard had shown with Seras and the equally uncharacteristic empathy that he felt for the girl's feelings were somehow related to what they three had been through. If it was, he suspected that the extreme manifestation of that was likely in their reaction to the three of them touching.

If Walter was more empathetic, and Alucard more tolerant (for Alucard,) what was the change for Seras?

Of course.

Walter pushed another strand of hair off of Seras' face with a fingertip. The girl who did everything she could to avoid close contact with others had adjusted herself to being touched and held with remarkable speed. All three of them were less guarded in their interactions with each other than was typical.

Walter looked at Alucard speculatively while he used a gentle hold on Seras shoulders to turn her around again to face the other vampire. "Let us finish this story. We're nearly there."

Alucard watched the pair. All of this reveling in emotion was starting to be wearing. "The next part of this is yours," he said to Walter. "Bring our raveled threads back together and I will finish it."

* * *

As the tones of Big Ben's bells faded away, Alucard left a newborn Walter on his own. Walter put aside the need for introspection, there was a war going on; he would handle his identity crisis later. 

Around him, the battle surged back into full furor after the slight pause the bells had bought. Somewhere in this slaughter, the man who had nearly killed him in 1944, and who had brought him to Millennium's tender mercies the night before, was continuing his bloody business.

Walter turned away from the tower and looked around the square. How was he going to find the Captain? He casually flicked wires from his fingers, clearing a circle around himself while he assessed the ebb and flow of the combat.

Regarding the devastation, Walter was painfully aware that he had caused much of the damage to Trafalgar Square. It had provided a relatively spacious venue for his fight with Alucard, although he had cut down a large portion of the forest of impaled vampires and Catholics that had grown in the square during the combat.

* * *

"I was not happy about that. I waited _centuries_ for another good impaling. Brazil was barely a warm-up." 

Walter grimaced at Alucard. "Do you want to just skip this part of the story? We both know that it's not vital to what Seras needs to know."

"Don't skip it Walter." Seras twisted around again to see his face. "I want to know the whole story."

* * *

Looking down the Mall toward Buckingham Palace, Walter saw fighting, but a glance back down Whitehall toward Parliament Square and Big Ben made it clear that the thick of the fighting was there. That, then, was where he would go; that was where the Captain would be. 

The fight to get to the walls outside Big Ben was invigorating. The old butler had paid lip service to growing old gracefully, but he had felt the sting of passing years as illustrated by his encounter with Jan Valentine – or the prior night's encounter with his current prey.

He was no longer old, and stronger and faster than he'd ever been. What had always been a pleasure was a joy, in part for the new strength he reveled in, and for the revenge he was exacting with every destroyed vampire.

The number of combatants thinned as he reached the houses of parliament. Jumping to the top of the wrought iron fence outside the clock tower, he scanned the melee. With his newly keen vision, he had little difficulty picking out the man who stood head and shoulders above most of his opponents.

Heavy above him, pregnant with threat, Walter could feel the zeppelin he'd only recently jumped out of. It was a palpable presence. He didn't look away from the hulking man to look at the death that floated above him. First he would destroy this one, then he would go up to that piece of hell and kill everything there that owed its allegiance to Millennium.

Walter jumped down to open a path to his target. His eyes met the Captain's and the two men prepared for their final encounter. Walter spun out the first web of flickering silver to snare and shred. He was faster than the boy that the Captain had nearly killed, with the guile and wisdom of the old man that he had been.

The response he had not expected from the big man was to run entirely. The Captain had braced himself, seemingly ready to take action based on Walter's first move, and then suddenly snapped his eyes up to the zeppelin. He leapt over the spin of silver and jumped the fence to the clock tower with ease, leaving Walter to chase him.

Both vampires had no difficulty scaling the outside of the clock tower. Walter occasionally paused, gripping the wall with one hand and sending out another lash of wire with the other, but the Captain seemed to anticipate those attacks, sometimes shifting horizontally with unexpected speed, allowing the wires to harmlessly slap against the wall; memorably, in one instance, letting go entirely to fall almost directly on top of Walter. The falling weight dislodged the smaller man and set him back in his climb while his quarry clambered upward.

Once he reached the top of the tower before it narrowed to its point, the German crouched and made a leap that looked entirely suicidal, but which bore him close enough to the zeppelin to catch one of the trailing antennas on the bottom of the ship and swing himself over to one of the hatches into the body of the zeppelin. Walter followed close behind, making the leap and catching the antenna with his wires to swing in just behind the Captain.

He caught a glimpse of the big man running down a corridor and took off after him. The two men ran into the depths of the ship. Walter was so focused on chasing his prey that he barely noticed the oppressive atmosphere that grew with every step.

Finally they reached a stretch of straight hallway where Walter had the ability to throw his wires out to tangle the German. He caught the man's arm with a pair and was jerked off balance by the strength with which the Captain pulled against the cutting strands. The pull should have contributed to amputating his arm, but while blood flew from the deep cuts the wires left, they failed to cut through bone as they should have.

The Captain dragged Walter behind him into the First's chamber. Walter had time to register Seras leaning over a gurney with Integra strapped to it, Alucard holding Major Max off the ground by a hard grip on his throat, and the creature hanging on the wall, before the Captain lunged across the laboratory space to attack Alucard.

* * *

"So this 'Captain' was the one who captured you and gave you to Millennium?" 

"Yes. He's also the reason why I wear the monocle. Alucard and I first encountered him when I was fourteen. He broke my cheekbone so badly that it damaged muscles that govern my eye. I require the monocle to compensate."

"You were only fourteen?" Seras touched his cheek under the lens. "You were just a boy."

"Walter was never 'just a boy.'" Alucard sprawled out in the chair and leered at the other man.

"Not after you got hold of me." Walter winked at Seras. "You saw us when you woke up. He looked so young, and he kept me company like another person my age – that 'hands on' approach he mentioned."

"It's hard to imagine." Seras twisted back around to look at Alucard.

"You're having trouble imagining that?" Alucard grinned slyly. The charcoal grey of his suit faded to white while his hair lengthened, his face softened, and his overall build became lighter and shorter. "Come here, Walter."

Seras had been so transfixed by Alucard's change from a handsome man who looked like the hero of a 1950s noir detective movie to an androgynous almost-child, that she had missed Walter's matching shift in appearance. She looked with surprise at the now white jacket draped over her legs before gawking at Walter as he stood. She let the shaggy haired boy help her off the floor and into the chair before he joined Alucard.

Alucard drew him down to sit next to him and leaned comfortably against the boy. "Can you imagine it now?"

Seras was flustered. She wasn't sure whether it was better or worse that they didn't look like the Alucard and Walter that she had known. They both looked so _young_ to be so clearly intimate with each other.

"It's not a matter of appearances," Alucard said, divining her thoughts with no difficulty. "You must learn that lesson. The sooner you do, the easier it will be for you to acclimate to this."

"He may be a man now, but he really _was_ just a boy then," Seras said indignantly.

"Your concern for my well-being is touching, Seras, but you're making assumptions based on incomplete information." The adult words and tone were somewhat jarring coming from the skinny boy nestled against Alucard. "If Alucard ever 'took advantage' of me, it was with my complicity."

"Precocious," Alucard said with a smile for the other vampire.

Walter gave Alucard a quick kiss. "In all ways. Which reminds me – I would almost kill for a cigarette."

"Feed your old habit after Seras has heard the whole story."

"It's almost over now, isn't it?" Seras asked.

Alucard nuzzled his nose against Walter's temple before answering. "Almost over, or nearly ready to begin. Your choice."


	9. Chapter 9

Walter rolled his eyes at Alucard and nudged him with an elbow. _"This_ story is nearly finished."

Seras bit her lip watching the two boys… men… vampires sitting together so comfortably. "Maybe I do have to learn to get over appearances, but right now, seeing you two like this makes it hard for me to pay attention to what you're saying. Could you just… "

"Just what?" Alucard asked with a smirk. "Just look older?" He ran fingers possessively across Walter's jaw.

"Yes!" Seras made a face; she hadn't intended to be so vehement. "Please."

Alucard made an annoyed noise and made a show of kissing Walter slowly and deliberately before standing. Seras watched, fascinated again, as Alucard grew taller and broader while his hair shortened and his suit once more turned charcoal grey. Even the jacket draped over her knees darkened once more. Walter filled out and sat taller in the chair. Entranced by Alucard's change, Seras looked back to see Walter's finished.

"Where does the monocle go when you're not this Walter? And how does your ponytail tie itself when it grows out?"

Walter shook his head and shrugged. "Magic?" He adjusted the monocle in front of his eye. "I know that in theory, I shouldn't even need the monocle. If I can make my body what I want, I can fix those damaged muscles." He smiled ruefully and stretched his long legs out. "But I'm so used to it that this is how I see myself, monocle and all."

"Unnecessary human affectations. You will learn. You will have made real progress when you keep those affectations out of choice, and not because you cannot do otherwise." Alucard said while he once again took a place behind Seras' chair.

This time Seras leaned back in the chair without being prompted. She closed her eyes gratefully when Alucard's fingers brushed over her skin and he began speaking.

* * *

Seras arrived in the First's chamber disoriented and frightened for Integra. She knew from Schrödinger's mind some of what to expect, but for Seras, the reality of Lilith was different from the catboy's male experience of her. Lilith was fascinating while disturbing simultaneously, but not repellent as the boy had seen her.

_ "Lilith is consuming her soul." _

She whipped around to look at Alucard, but after assuring herself that there were no enemies behind her, she turned back to where Ilse stood over Integra witnessing Seras and Alucard's every action and word. "Where's Doc? He'll know how to help Integra if anyone can." She was using Schrödinger's memories for everything she could get from them.

"He is with me." Alucard's words came out in a low snarl. "And there is nothing we can do for Integra now except kill her before Lilith consumes her entirely."

"There has to be something else!"

Alucard crossed the distance between them and picked Seras up by the front of her uniform, leaving her feet dangling off the ground, "There is _nothing_ else we can do! Do you understand me?"

At the same time, whispering in her mind, Alucard's words came, _Lilith has her. We cannot save Integra, but we can let her do one last service for Hellsing and the Crown. It is possible to force Lilith back to torpor, but I cannot do it. I cannot penetrate that circle. You will have to do this._

* * *

"No!"

Seras pulled away from Alucard and stood abruptly. "No. You are not telling me that I let Integra die, too." Suddenly Seras was angry – at the situation, at Millennium, at Alucard and Walter, at herself – and the only ones to take it out on were the two men.

"I don't know what this stupid game is, but it's not funny. You can't tell me that I let Pip dissolve into nothing to save me in some place I don't even believe exists, and then tell me that I let Integra die in front of me."

"You accuse me of lying to you?" Alucard suddenly loomed over her, his expression anything but friendly. "I am your master, girl. I have no need to lie to you about anything."

Seras took an involuntary step backward and bumped into Walter, who had appeared behind her without a sound. "I am tired of the way both of you are behaving," he said as he put his arms around Seras, holding her without restraining her. "Both of your reactions are understandable, but neither is appropriate."

The tall man steered Seras over to the coffin, and with a gentle pressure on her shoulder, encouraged her to sit. "Enough musical chairs." When she sat, he joined her and put an arm around her waist. "You may not like what you will hear, but it is the truth. Just remember that neither Alucard nor I have anything to gain from lying to you about something so important."

"I've already survived whatever it is, right?"

"You've already gotten through the experience," Walter said and kissed the top of her head.  
_

* * *

If Integra dies at the moment she loses hold of her soul to Lilith, her death will be carried over with her soul. It's not enough to kill the First, but the shock will stun her back into torpor. _

"No! You can't ask that!"

Alucard shook Seras and glared. _If you don't do it, she will use Integra's soul to wake and what has happened in London will be a sunny Sunday afternoon in comparison. _

Alucard brought Seras' face close to his. _Imagine what I could do to the world if I wanted to and multiply that a hundred times over. _

Ilse watched the exchange between the two vampires with frank interest. All she needed to do was wait. It wouldn't even be a matter of minutes before the Hellsing woman was sucked dry and Lilith was awake. Then these two would be swept away like the chaff they were.

Seras blinked back tears. Alucard's grip on her collar was so tight she could no longer speak aloud. _There has to be another way._

If there were another way, don't you think I'd be taking it, stupid child? Seras flinched under his glare. _There is no time to find another way and no other way that Millennium has found in their years of studying her. Now look. _

Alucard put Seras down and turned her around to see Lilith, Integra, and Ilse. _Use your third eye. Open it and see Integra's soul. _

There, stretched tenuously between Integra and Lilith was something – something like a rubber fog, almost intangible, but giving the impression of a tension in its substance. It wasn't being drawn smoothly and easily into Lilith; Integra was giving the vampire Mother a fight for her soul.

_When you see it ready to let go, you must kill Integra. Throw the woman outside of the circle and I will handle her. _

Seras was horrified by the idea of killing Integra. How could she do that? There had to be another choice. _Can't you just… I don't know… can't you do it from outside the circle? With your guns? _

Alucard snarled at Seras. _My guns are empty, and even if they weren't, Integra deserves a better death than that. You'll give it to her, or I'll make you wish that it were you strapped to that gurney. _

Alucard gave Seras no further opportunity to for argument. Instead, he picked her up and threw her into the circle to collide with Ilse. "Give her to me!"

With the advantage of surprise at the odd tactic, Seras was able to grab Ilse and drag her away from the gurney. With a hard shove, Ilse practically flew out of the circle into Alucard's arms.

Alucard gave the blonde vampire his shark's grin and bent to tear into her, but she fell to pieces in his grip, literally falling out of her clothes as a swarm of rats. Some scrambled for escape, some bit Alucard's hands and legs, and some turned to run back into the circle.

Alucard laughed as dogs sprang from the shadows; not his usual flame-eyed hellhounds, but smaller, crimson-eyed dogs that tore into the rats like the terriers they resembled. "Doc told me about your vermin."

Rats ran throughout the lab, pursued by the hellhound version of rat terriers. They played with the rodents like the dogs they resembled, with the exception of those rats that tried to cross into the circle of Lilith's influence; those rats were immediately and mercilessly eradicated.

Seras ignored the strange scene outside the circle, hurrying to the gurney and bending over Integra's rigid body. "Sir Integra! Can you hear me?"

Integra's eyes, which had been tightly squeezed closed, snapped open and met Seras' with an expression of mingled pain and anger before she recognized the girl. Her face was covered in sweat, her teeth gritted against the agony. She nodded, a sharp jerk of her head in response.

Holding back tears, Seras quickly explained to Integra what Alucard had told her. "If I kill you now. I think you might get to keep your soul, but she," a glance over her shoulder at Lilith, "will wake. If I kill you when your soul leaves your body, you won't exist anymore." _Like Pip. _ "But she'll be asleep again."

Integra squeezed her eyes shut again. Seras watched the woman's soul almost unraveling from her body. She'd never really given it much thought, but looking now, she could see that a person's soul permeated her entire physical being – they were more closely tied than Seras had ever thought. Integra's spirit was being sucked away like water squeezed from a sponge.

"Integra." Seras said, wiping sweat off of the woman's face. "I'm sorry, but you have to tell me what you choose." She looked at Integra's agonized form and realized that the woman probably couldn't speak without screaming. She wouldn't force that on Integra in her final moments. "Should I kill you now?"

Integra shook her head vehemently, tears joining the sweat on her face.

Seras let her own tears flow, although she kept a tight rein on the sobs that wanted to burst free. "You want me to kill you to put Lilith back to sleep?"

Integra nodded, another sharp jerk of her head.

What does one say to something like that? Seras had no idea. She pushed sweat-dampened strands of hair off of Integra's face. How on earth was she supposed to kill this woman? After everything they had both been through, it was completely wrong for this to be her end.

She had no weapon and she couldn't stand the idea of killing Hellsing's leader with her bare hands. Seras could see that Integra did not have much more time left.

Seras had a moment to register the crack of eight swift gunshots before the pain caught up. She could feel the burn of silver in her chest and choked back a cry while she dropped to her knees next to the gurney.

* * *

Seras leaned into Walter and shivered. It was eerie, unsettling, perhaps outright terrifying to hear these two unwind a story that encompassed the loss of two people she cared about. She rubbed her hand over her chest, but there wasn't even the residual burn she remembered from Father Anderson's silver blades. Her body had ached for weeks after Anderson had treated her like a pincushion. Maybe it was the blessing on the bayonets that had left the pain.

And how had she regrown her arm? That was something worth remembering.

"I've already gotten through this, right?" She just needed the reassurance as the story became more disturbing.

"You've already gotten through it," Walter agreed and squeezed her gently.

Somehow, it didn't help her feel better, because the only thought she had in response was, _But Integra didn't. Or Pip. Or most of the Wild Geese. Or…_

"That does you no good." Seras met Alucard's eyes as he spoke. "It does you no good to minimize your existence because other people did not survive. You're a vampire, you will always survive the humans around you."

* * *

Major Max tossed the empty Luger aside. Bullets would do no good against Alucard, but his child – the joke of a vampire – she still felt them. It had been inconvenient that Alucard had chosen a female child so close to Millennium's unveiling of their grand plan of destruction.

The terriers were harrying the last of Ilse into nothingness, Seras was on her knees next to Integra, and Alucard was crossing the room as such speed that he appeared to fly.

"You." Alucard's eyes burned, but Millennium's Major smiled peacefully against the vampire's rage.

"Yes, me. No one but me. Behold, my creation." Doc may have been the science, but Max was the motive force. He beamed at Alucard even when the vampire hoisted him off the ground with a grip on his throat. Every moment spent in intimidation and torture tactics was another moment closer to a paradigm shift.

And he sensed his other ace approaching.

When the hulking Captain burst through the open doorway exactly on cue, Max grinned at the vampire holding him off the ground. Oh, things were not over yet, but he felt events shifting back in Millennium's favor.

Seras kept herself from falling and levered herself up to stand over Integra through sheer tenacity. The bullets had done her more damage than she would have expected. If anything could be said for the Major, he had good aim.

"Seras…" Integra choked out the word and Seras took her hand in her good hand. "… drink."

The girl shook her head, nearly falling over from the vehemence of the motion. She couldn't stand the idea of drinking Integra's blood, even as the memory of that one taste rose, raging in her body.

Integra squeezed her hand with surprising strength and glared at Seras with that familiar fire. "Drink," she rasped.

Seras was reminded of what had happened with Pip and cried harder, but she couldn't refuse her leader's dying order. She leaned over Integra, bleeding on the woman, and kissed her – a goodbye for a beloved friend, even if she and Integra had never actually been friends. With what they had been through, they were closer than friends.

When her teeth penetrated the skin of Integra's neck, Seras inadvertently found herself caught; she had plugged into what was happening between Integra and Lilith and she wasn't in Lilith's league by any stretch of the imagination. The coin of Integra's soul had already been claimed by another, and Seras' unplanned violation of Lilith's claim was like a four fingered man attempting to pickpocket a master thief. She was caught and being hauled in for her punishment.

What should have terrified her was muted by the mutual pleasure her bite brought for herself and for Integra. The woman's wracked body relaxed against the gurney and she drew a slow and shuddering breath. Seras thought it might be worth it to die if she could take the agony out of Integra's last moments.

Walter was unaware of the byplay with Integra and Seras. He had registered their presences and that of Alucard, but his true focus was solely for the tall man he'd chased up to the zeppelin from the hell that was London.

He dug in his heels against the sheer strength with which the Captain still dragged him toward Alucard and Millennium's leader. Walter lashed out with the wires on his free hand and drew the taut filaments between his teeth.

Everywhere the wires wrapped the German's body, they cut into his flesh, but in every case, they stopped at bone without cutting as they should. At least with the need to heal severed muscle and tendons, the big man slowed down and Walter was able to stop him in his progress across the room to Alucard and the Major.

Alucard made no move to interfere. This duel had been an act in three parts, and it was time for Walter to bring the curtain down. When he turned back to what was happening inside the circle, Alucard snarled and surged forward, almost forgetting the fat man hanging in his grasp. "No!" Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl.

Walter thought quickly, seeking a way to stop this man who seemed unstoppable every time the two met. Bone stopped the wires at every turn. That was something he could work around.

With a jerk of his hands, Walter whipped the wires loose from the Captain's body. The big man stumbled forward when the pull holding him back released. As quickly as he'd taken the wires away, Walter lashed out one last time, wrapping the almost invisible threads around his enemy's neck and pulling the way he should have when he was a child – he pulled with a single, vicious decapitating jerk. Several threads were stopped on bone, but all it took was one to slip between the vertebrae and finish the final cut, separating the big man's head from his body.

Quickly assessing the situation, Walter wrote off Alucard as being fully able to take care of himself. Turning to Integra and seeing Seras bent over her, feeding, Walter ran to pull the girl away only to be stopped short at the edge of the circle. He was on the first flick of his fingers that would destroy Seras when his fingers went limp.

_Do not interfere, Angel. This is Integra's will. _ Alucard returned control of his fingers to Walter, who paced the edge of the circle and tried again and again to push through. Not even the First could take his attention away from what was happening between Seras and Integra.

"Watch." Alucard shook Max and held him to have an unimpeded view of the occupants of the circle. "Watch your dream die with mine. And when you have seen your dream die, I am going to swallow your soul and make you watch the death of your dream over and over."

They didn't have long to wait and watch.

Seras pulled away from Integra, but ceasing to drink did nothing to sever the contact she now had with Lilith. She was still losing herself. Maybe it was for the best. She had too many memories she didn't want to have, too many losses in her short life.

She could see Integra's last remnants of herself stretching between the woman and the creature on the wall. This was the moment. Seras had no idea what would happen to her when she killed Integra, but she didn't allow herself to hesitate. Integra had the courage to make this sacrifice, Seras had the courage it would take to make it count.

Seras reached InBetween inside Integra's chest and withdrew the woman's heart.

The backlash was immediate. The shock of it made Alucard drop the Major, who fell to the ground writhing and clutching his head, bleeding from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Walter, no longer of Lilith's bloodline, leaned heavily on one of the lab tables and swallowed the blood that filled his mouth when he bit deeply into his tongue.

Across London, Millennium's vampires reacted as the Major had, in many cases giving their opponents an advantage to exploit. No vampires directly died from the psychic EMP, but many died from enemies using that moment of weakness to finish the job.

On the zeppelin, Walter found that he could cross the line painted on the floor and hurried to Integra's side. He knew, without doubt that Integra was dead, but he still had to be sure. He had to see her, up close, for himself.

Seras lay on the floor next to the gurney.

After assuring himself that Integra was gone, Walter picked up Seras. Behind him, the Major was meeting a messy, but swift death, not that death was an end to his suffering by any stretch of imagination.

He had no way of knowing whether Seras was alive or not. It wasn't as though he could check her pulse and respiration. Instead, Walter carried her to Alucard, who took her from the other man.

Seras had caught the worst of the backlash, despite not being of Lilith's bloodline, she had the beginning of a link with the First from her foolhardy feeding from Integra. When Integra's death hit Lilith, Seras was riding its coattails. That she survived at all was remarkable.

With only a tiny spark of life remaining in the girl, Alucard made his decision and bent over her, nipping gently at her neck and draining her life and soul into himself.

* * *

EMP: Electromagnetic Pulse. (DOD) The electromagnetic radiation from a strong electronic pulse, most commonly caused by a nuclear explosion that may couple with electrical or electronic systems to produce damaging current and voltage surges. (My thanks to ciardarois for the term, although she brought it up for a situation in "Machiavelli.") 


	10. Epilogue

The silence stretched while Seras sat staring at Alucard. 

It explained a few things, like why she had both arms, how Alucard could tell her part of the story, why she didn't have any residual pain from the silver bullets…

As much as it made sense, though, Seras didn't want to accept the thought that she wasn't a real person anymore; that she was just a walking talking _piece of Alucard?_

No.

"Where's Lilith now?" she asked dully. She was aware of Walter sitting quietly beside her. He hadn't taken his arm away from its place around her waist, but he made no move to get closer or to distance himself from her.

"Answer your own question," Alucard replied acerbically and smiled in the face of her glare.

Seras held the glare for a moment before abruptly standing and leaving the room.

"She's going to her, isn't she?" Walter asked, rising and joining Alucard, who put an arm around his waist.

"Yes. And she'll probably be back soon with more questions." Alucard looked briefly annoyed before he smiled and pulled Walter against him, sliding his hands up the other vampire's back. "How do you want to spend the time until she gets back?"

* * *

Seras walked through the hallways of the deserted mansion. There were no humans here, but somewhere, under the building, she could feel a presence. Her only excuse for not noticing before was her focus on the story Walter and Alucard were telling her – the story of the deaths of everyone around her except Alucard's. 

Even her own.

_No. _

She turned a corner and stared at another empty hallway lined with doors. Why wasn't there a sign somewhere, _This way to the Mother of all vampires._ Or at least, the mother of most vampires. She chose a door at random and left it standing open on an empty billiard room.

_No. _ She still felt like herself. She still didn't want to do everything Alucard did. She still mourned the deaths of the humans in London. She wasn't changed like Walter.

She tried another door and walked down the hallway it revealed.

_Is it really that bad?_ she had asked.

_That depends. To me? No, it's not that bad. I've seen and done worse and laughed while doing it. To you? With your delusions of humanity? It is probably that bad. _

Yes, it certainly seemed that it _was_ that bad.

There had to be some other explanation.

Seras tried the door at the end of the hall and growled to find it locked. She was not in the mood for more obstacles. With a silent apology to the ghost of Sir Penwood, she pulled the door off its hinges and found herself in what had to be a ballroom.

_He is as real a person as you are. _ Alucard's private words for her earlier.

Crossing the ballroom was eerie. When was the next time this huge room would be filled with light and laughter and the warmth of human beings? She tried a door on the opposite wall and found a short corridor that led into the kitchen.

Or her question, _I've already survived whatever it is, right? _ No wonder Walter's response was so equivocal, _You've already gotten through the experience. _

She'd gotten through the experience but not survived it?

A quick search of the kitchen revealed what she'd been looking for – cellar stairs. She stared at the darkness below and started down the stairs. As an afterthought, she flicked the switch that turned on the lights and regretted it almost immediately. The stark utility of the space revealed below her was unsettling in a way she couldn't explain – even utter darkness was preferable.

_Are you sure he didn't do anything to change you? You act different. _ Wasn't that the crux of her worry? Walter seemed so different. If what Alucard said were true, would he mess with her head and make her act like Walter?

_When did you ever see me with someone I was close to? _ She hadn't, but she found it so difficult to imagine Walter close with anyone the way he had demonstrated with Alucard.

Then again, she hadn't been able to imagine her parents being as close – physically – as Walter and Alucard seemed to be. Maybe it was the same problem of imagination.

She snorted mirthlessly imagining Alucard in a paternal role. Not unless it in was a family prone to incest.

The young woman came out of her thoughts to focus on the matter at hand; she could feel it – power beating against her skin. Alucard had been right; it made her want to run both away from and toward the source of the power. What would happen to her in Lilith's presence? A female soul that was an extrusion of a male body. It didn't seem too bad so far.

That any of what Alucard told her was true made her anxious. She wanted proof that Alucard and Walter were lying, not that what they told her was true.

At the back of the cellar was another door.

Seras hesitated in front of the door and wondered what was on the other side. A root cellar? A wine cellar? A storage closet? It really didn't matter what it had been; what it had become was a chapel housing a goddess.

Steeling herself, she opened the door and faced the truth of the story. A closed coffin lay on the floor in the center aisle of a spacious wine cellar. Every step closer to the coffin came with greater effort until she stood over the box and opened its lid to regard the heavily bandaged and contorted figure inside.

"So you're Lilith."

* * *

Upstairs, Alucard and Walter waited for Seras to return, occupying themselves quite enjoyably until Alucard pulled away from Walter. "She's on her way back. Are you going to bother with clothing?" 

"Don't rush the girl." Walter pulled a face at the interruption and concentrated on his clothes. At least he didn't have to try to concentrate on the maintenance of the shadows that formed his clothing all the time. He had a feeling he'd probably end up nude at inopportune moments if he did.

By the time Seras arrived, both Alucard and Walter were fully clothed, if intentionally disheveled. Alucard insisted, saying there was only so much he was willing to shelter her, even now.

"It's all true, isn't it?" She hugged herself and looked at the two men.

At a mental urging from Walter, Alucard went to Seras. He paused, and at further urging from Walter, put his arms around her. "What reason do I have to lie?" He didn't mention that he could prove it by reclaiming her body from her; the idea was to show her that she was an individual, not drive home the fact that her individuality was an illusion.

"Why don't I remember anything? And why did I wake up here? I don't even know how long it's been since this happened." Seras dropped her hands and held them away from her body, unsure what to do with them when Alucard embraced her. Finally she put them around his waist and leaned against him, resting her cheek against his chest. "What happened to my mind?"

Alucard's voice rumbled under her ear when he answered. "You were damaged. I'm not certain if it was Lilith, or going InBetween unprepared, although I think it was likely a combination of both. Your memories were fragmented, scrambled even."

Alucard had tried waking Seras with those broken patterns still in her mind. It had been… unfortunate. He'd forced her consciousness down again and stripped all of the memories starting at her first time InBetween through her death and aborted awakening. The first few tries had not been successful. Alucard had been forced to rebuild much of Seras' mind, and the memories of the events after the catboy first took her InBetween would forever be unreachable for her.

But before he could take the time to experiment to rebuild a functional Seras, he and Walter had assisted the humans in their final extermination of Millennium's vampire battalion. "It has been three months."

Seras' arms tightened around him. As much as her rational mind said that Alucard and Walter were telling her the truth, she just couldn't bring herself to believe what they were telling her. Three months had gone by? She could believe that more easily than she could believe that she had failed so completely in her duty to protect both Pip and Integra.

"What did you do to me? Why did it take you three months? Did you change me like you did Walter?"

Alucard gave an exasperated snort. "The only thing I did for Walter, other than give him a life and body again, was to dull the trauma of what Millennium did to him. He needed to be able to function in battle. Other than that, he – and you – are unaltered."

"Dull the trauma?" Seras looked incredulously at Alucard. "No offense, Walter, but you seem more than dulled." He seemed like an entirely different person, was what he bloody seemed like.

Walter drew himself up into an approximation of the man she had known before and gave her a cool look. Since he had been the one who seemed to keep taking her side during the storytelling, Seras felt embarrassed to have challenged him that way. It just… he just didn't seem like the same man.

"I hardly think that you are the right person to judge what I do or do not feel."

_Come here, Walter. _ Walter raised an eyebrow and approached the two. He eyed Alucard's hand warily when the vampire held it out to him.

"I'm not certain I want to do that," he said after a pause.

_Afraid, Angel? _ Alucard wiggled his fingers at Walter, beckoning.

"Honestly, yes."

Seras twisted around to look at Walter, only catching his half of the conversation. The outstretched hand made it easy enough to guess what the tenor of Alucard's half was. His arm tightened around her when she began to pull away from him.

"I am tired of your doubts and veiled accusations," Alucard said, holding her firmly in place. "And I'm done indulging them. We have a direct way to put them to rest."

"Wait!" Seras said when Walter reached to take Alucard's hand. "Just one more question." She continued when Alucard nodded. "How many times have you done this – given bodies to souls like this?"

"Including the two of you, twice. I have given bodies to the souls I command, but I have never given them autonomy. They were always extensions of my will. You two are different." Integra would have been the first, if he'd been able to.

"Why?"

In response, Alucard stretched out and caught Walter's hand. _Enough pretending. _

When Alucard finally allowed Walter and Seras to pull away, neither went far. Seras rubbed her hands down her arms again and looked at the floor.

"Now," Alucard said, giving absolutely no external indication of any of the emotions Walter and Seras had felt from him. "Stop lying to yourself and asking pointless questions. You know our hearts–"

"For lack of a better word," interjected Walter and grinned shakily at Alucard's flash of annoyance. He was still off balance from the prolonged experience of shared emotions, but he'd taken a lot of shocks in his life and had practice at bouncing back.

"–and we know yours." He finished.

And hadn't that been what Seras had been frightened of the first time? Not just knowing how Alucard and Walter felt, but knowing that _they_ knew how she felt – lonely, scared, tired, and so many more things, including attracted to both of them. What kind of person were they going to think she was?

Then she realized how stupid a question that was, since she knew both of them felt the same way.

Maybe this empathy thing wasn't all bad – she would never have to accuse either man of not knowing how she felt. But… Seras had a feeling that things were going to get hairy when the shock of everything they had just told her wore off.

Still, having these two around and actually caring about what happened to her would probably help. Even if they were two of _the_ most unlikely sources of comfort she could have imagined. She thought she could get used to it, though.

She'd have to put it to the test, scientifically, of course.

* * *

_So much for my maiden attempt at AxS. I know that this fic is flawed. I'm afraid it's just an incredibly difficult pairing for me to write, but for my friend Oscar Rose's birthday gift, I gave it a shot. What a surprise that my Walter fetish had to insert itself as well. I hope you enjoyed the read. If you have any quibbles with plot or characterization, let me know. I honestly do appreciate concrit, and I get far too little of it._  



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